Ambience: Contingency Summer
by Hieda no Akyuu
Summary: This diary is dedicated to the most precious people to me in the world: Bismarck, U-511, Max, Lebe, Prinz Eugen, Gernot, and my beloved daughter, Retia. Without you, this diary would be impossible to write.
1. 29-5-2014

**29.5.2014**

Looking towards the future, I feel that I must channel my inner Franz Biberkopf. To become the next _Berlin Alexanderplatz..._ well, it's not as though I'm not already.

I am writing this diary to record the events of the next few months, for my husband and I have agreed that these next few days will bring great change to our beloved nation of Germany. And by change, I mean both good and bad. Perhaps this change will be so great that it will effect the rest of the world as well, though I hope not in the way we fear.

Recounting the events that have transpired from the past year is vital, for the past sets the foundation for the path that is to follow.

Last summer, in the year of 2013, my husband and I were contacted by a highly classified American special forces group, the leader of whom wished to speak to the German Federal Chancellor. The man who spoke with us, who goes by the name of Sanford, warned us to be wary of suspicious activity from an international terrorist group known as the "Advanced Administration of the Holy War"...or something of the sort. It really sounds like a comically bad religious terrorist organization, a less public-relations-friendly version of those who have taken responsibility for the bombings we've seen in France recently, but from what we have been told, apparently these terrorists are not to be taken lightly, so I suppose we shall give them the benefit of the doubt. He then continued on to reveal details about a top-secret military project called the Moebius Four Armament Program, a combat android development program designed to condense weapons technology of the Second World War, namely naval technology in the form of warships, to the size of a human, an interesting concept indeed. And most surprising of all was that Sanford's team, known simply as Seal Team Six, had already begun concept development of the European naval personnel that they would construct. They outsourced their work to local British and German teams here in Europe, and we have since taken it from there.

By contract, we have been limited to five naval personnel, both we and the British. The British fellows are quite the history nostalgics - they have decided to bring back the dreadnoughts of the olden First World War era, while we have stuck true to the Moebius Four nature and have built warships of the olden Kriegsmarine.

My husband has given me jurisdiction of the overseeing of this secret branch of the Marine. Initially Gernot had discussed this with the heads of the Bundeswehr, as at first we weren't sure how we would categorize our new military assets courtesy of the American Seal Team Six. Gernot wanted it under our secret research and development program, which my husband and I have personally codenamed the _Wunderwaffe_ for personal reasons. Though, I shudder to think how Dr. Richtofen would react to the thought of warships being personified as we have done. Perhaps it's better to drop the thought. But after hearing the discussions by our top ranking admirals of the Marine, he was convinced otherwise and delegated this program under the supervision of Marine technicians and specialists, provided that I, his wife, headed the entire operation. We live in the time of turbulent politics - not necessarily _violent_ politics, but you can never quite trust anyone outside immediate family or those who have been close to you all your life. I, being the Chancellor's wife, can provide the security he needs that our valuable military project that has been generously shared with us by the Americans from Seal Team Six for no other purpose than for our own national security, with no binding contract or obligation by the American government, remains in good hands. We still call the project the _Wunderwaffe_ anyway, just between me and Gernot...well, because of our habit, the girls also refer to their own program as the _Wunderwaffe_ too...much to my chagrin.

Going back to the topic of program security, Gernot's resolution to have me head the Wunderwaffe was further strengthened when we had a meeting with the other nation representatives of the European Union, discussing the rise in threat of the international terrorist organization aforementioned, the AAHW. At the time, we had solid evidence to believe that AAHW-affiliated individuals were attempting to traffick nuclear warheads across the border into Hungary amidst the heating of relations between Hungary and Russia, for the alleged purpose of framing Hungary of trying to poise a nuclear threat to a more heavily armed Russia, who would be sure to wipe Hungary off the map with their more than eager nuclear arsenal. Obviously, we couldn't allow that, and Gernot ordered me to take the direction of the Wunderwaffe towards developing them not as simply "ship girls", as the Americans call them, but as black ops, highly trained specialist operatives - a level higher than even our prestigious GSG-9 counter-terrorism unit.

And so we launched the fruits of our labor with five ship girls last December, before the year was concluded. Their names are Bismarck, Z-1 Leberecht Maass, Z-3 Max Schultz, Prinz Eugen, and U-511...just like the historical counterparts that they represent. True to my husband's wishes, I had our development team, with guidance under Seal Team Six, construct our new naval personnel to double as both combatants capable of naval battle and counter-terrorism, and after their successful construction, I had them train under our good friends over at the GSG-9.

But this is not all. Earlier this year, during the first weeks of the first month, we received a call from our close and lifelong friend Marco Santini, the Italian Minister of Defense. The three of us - me, Gernot, and Marco - were all students at the University of Cologne, and we all even shared a class in intermediary political science together. While a friendly man and pleasant person normally, Marco has had several bad experiences in his political life and has adopted a questionable habit of hiring expertly trained private mercenaries or former members of the Italian special forces like the 9th Parachute Assault Regiment to create a sort of personal spy ring to gather information on everything and anything related to his safety and the safety of his country. He means well, but I suppose that this spy ring can be viewed with suspicion and can certainly get him into quite some trouble should this information be put into the public's hands. Regardless, he admitted that one of his spies had fed him intel that we had secured for ourselves quite the wondrous weapons program and asked to hear further details about it. Gernot gave him the very basic outline but refused to go into detail, for fear that this would quickly devolve into a chain of military secrets that would cause all the developed nations to gun for naval personnel like ours. Luckily, Seal Team Six was already on top of the case before we even needed to contact them, saying that they'd dealt with Marco personally. However, in exchange for him keeping his mouth shut, Seal Team Six did request that we work with a few select Italian agents to construct two Italian naval personnel for the Minister of Defense. Their names are Littorio and Roma, and because they were built under the Wunderwaffe staff's directive, they are considered part of the Wunderwaffe unit, though, and because of this, all of the girls under the Wunderwaffe program are very good friends with one another.

To finally catch ourselves up here, two weeks ago, Seal Team Six notified us of an enemy attack on one of Japan's naval bases in Okinawa. That was the base from which Japan's naval personnel fleet, called the Moebius Four Platoon, which is by far the largest fleet of naval combat androids created - well, more like the only one of its kind, we don't have enough ourselves to warrant it a label like a "fleet" - launched for missions and docked. Although only a fraction of the Moebius Four Platoon was stationed there, the fact remains that this attack has gravely injured the commander in charge of the fleet and the naval personnel stationed there. We knew that the AAHW's power was on the rise, and that they were the ones most likely responsible for the sudden appearance of these hostile naval personnel dubbed "Abyssals". Following the attack on the naval base at Okinawa, we have raised our own military bases and ports here in Germany on high alert as well, and so have the Italians and the British. We had requested Seal Team Six for permission to construct additional naval personnel, but they have denied us such permission, for fear that intel on their work would continue to spread. For now, we have frozen all assets regarding the Wunderwaffe and locked them down to minimize any chance of precious intelligence being leaked into the wrong hands.

* * *

Gernot and I returned from the Ascension Day sermons at the Berlin Cathedral Church about two hours ago. Attending national occasions to maintain our public image is important, after all.

I sometimes remember the lives Gernot and I used to have before our venture into politics. Sometimes he and I talk about how much better off our lives would be had we not entered politics. Politics ages you so quickly...well, I suppose neither Gernot nor I even expected to reach the positions we have now. We didn't enter politics knowing we would be the next Chancellor family. Things rather fell into place quite neatly. At first, I considered it a blessing from God...now, I'm not so sure about that.

The sole reason why I have second thoughts about our political careers is behind me. Our one-year-old daughter, Retia. The problem is that neither Gernot nor I had planned to have a child up until very recently - in fact, at one point we almost agreed not to have any children for the sake of dedicating our lives to the betterment of our nation. Germany has the biggest population of any nation in the European Union - we could afford to leave the responsibility of raising Germany's next bright generation to the hands of our contemporaries. But time changes people...and one of those people was my husband, who saw his fellow members of cabinet happily watching their own children grow up through grade school into university. I can only guess that he felt rather left behind, so he asked me if it still wasn't possible for us to start a family of our own before it really was too late. After quite a few months' worth of discussion, I finally yielded, but at our age, taking care of more than one child would probably burden us too greatly for us to continue our political careers. We wanted to balance our desires to be faithful lawgivers of the nation for the improvement of our country and people and to be good parents. We didn't want to compromise one or the other if we could help it, so Retia is to be our one and only precious child.

But for our positions, having a child is potentially very dangerous. Should we be targeted, either my husband for being the Chancellor of Germany or me for being the wife of the Chancellor, Retia would no longer have a parent or parents to take care of her as she grows up. She has extended family and relatives, of course, but there is always also the possibility of Retia being targeted as well. Therefore, with Gernot's permission, I have used my authority over the Wunderwaffe program to bring our girls to our mansion and station them here to not only look after our daughter whilst we are away for work or other PR-related events but also to protect her.

But now that the high seas are being threatened by a terrorist threat, the reassuring days knowing that my daughter is in the safe and protective hands of the girls of the Wunderwaffe appear to be coming to a close. I know not what the future holds...but I pray that these girls will help me and my family see it through safely.


	2. 30-5-2014

**30.5.2014**

Oberfeldwebel Ulrich Jollenbeck, one of the main drill sergeants of the GSG-9 and the man who has personally trained the Wunderwaffe girls, has reported to me a peculiar event that is occurring with the nation of Japan. The country is mobilizing. This poses a few critical problems with the rest of the international community, the fact that Japan's rearmament movement is undergoing drastic changes in such a short time.

First, the facts: just six months ago, before the start of the Moebius Four Armament Pact, Japan had roughly 250,000 currently active servicemen and servicewomen and roughly another 56,000 reserve forces and the fifth largest defense budget in the world. While under their former Constitution, Japan was barred from having their own formal military, a penalty imposed upon them after their capitulation in the Second World War, so the country formed the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, their de facto military that circumvented the technicalities of Article 9 of their post-war Constitution, encouraged by local American authorities at the time, as well. So with the introduction of the Moebius Four Armament Pact, if I am to understand the terms of this Pact correctly from Seal Team Six, Article 9 is effectively nullified and is no longer in effect, meaning that Japan is free to indoctrinate its own formal military force, which, given its growing right-wing sentiments over the past few years, one might think should have happened by now.

Strangely, however, they have not - their armed forces are still referred to officially as the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. This has multiple implications: first, Japan may be aware of the fact that it is alarming its neighboring countries by suddenly mobilizing their forces within such a short time, and that they feel that their claim to self-defense against this new Abyssal threat is not convincing enough, so they believe that refraining from swearing in a proper military force is necessary to at least prevent international relations with neighboring countries from falling through. Second, they may have not yet formed an official military as a ploy to lure these Abyssal enemies into a false sense of advantage over the Japanese forces by giving off the guise of slowness and unpreparedness. Oberfeldwebel Jollenbeck's report suggests quite the opposite - the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are extremely formidable and are quite mobilized already in response to the Abyssal threat. Third, perhaps the Japanese Self-Defense Forces still require time to organize their assets before declaring themselves a formal military. Whichever the case, the fact that Japan is still relying on its Self-Defense Forces as its active military is both strange and unsettling.

Now, if the Oberfeldwebel's report is to be believed, Japan's standing forces across all military branches stands at an alarming 400,000 and another 100,000 in reserve. Now compare this to the United States' military forces, at roughly 500,000 active personnel with another 500,000 in reserve. While these numbers may not seem like they can compare very well, we must consider that in a matter of years, the Japanese military has increased by a stunning 60% in active personnel, and if the Japanese government ever declares war on this new Abyssal threat, as they are entitled to do with the nullification of Article 9, these numbers for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are sure to swell even further. And this is not including however many hundreds of naval personnel that make up the Moebius Four Platoon that Seal Team Six has constructed for the Japanese's sake.

Second: Japan remilitarizing so heavily like they are doing now is raising many concerns across the world governments. China, both Koreas, and virtually any country that had been taken over by Japanese conquest pre-World War II are crying foul at Japan's heavy remilitarization efforts, and Japan has been ignoring them, prompting a miniature arms race across all of these countries and thus aggravating the North Korean problem. The delicate situation that those countries in the Far East have been juggling amongst themselves is beginning to become even more frayed, and Japan, the instigator, shows no sign of backing down. While their cause may be justified, the other countries will not tolerate their aggressive militarization. This is the exact identical scenario as Germany's, should we decide to aggressively expand our military forces and resources and assets. After all, our own Bundeswehr is currently having major logistics problems with equipment and gear, and we may not even be able to uphold our obligated NATO promises for EU defense in this fiscal year - but the moment we try to expand our military, all the countries around us shall cry foul and dig up the dead souls of those who have perished in the Second World War some seventy years ago. While understandable, the situation is simply unfortunate - and Japan is demonstrating for everyone else in the international community what will happen if one of the countries of the former Axis Powers attempts to remilitarize as they had done in the past.

Third, Japan's own remilitarization movement has sparked a sort of rightist opinion among our own speakers in government as well. The Abyssal threat has been no secret amongst the world's leading politicians and political authorities; however, in light of the recent large-scale ambush attack that successfully destroyed one of Japan's major naval bases, more and more am I seeing politicians agree that the nations of the world must mobilize at least somewhat for the sake of the defense of their shores against this mysterious seaborne terrorist threat. A few of our own representatives in the Bundestag are calling for strong and aggressive expansion of our own military forces in knowing defiance of the countries around us who may also cry foul at our doing so, and recently, more and more of our representatives are beginning to agree with them.

If Japan shall arm itself, then so shall we...is the atmosphere these days.

Gernot and I hesitate to act just yet. For one, we still have very little information on what or who is responsible for this Abyssal terrorist threat. According to Seal Team Six, the terrorist group I mentioned yesterday, the AAHW, is the group that had constructed the Abyssals and once based their headquarters in a classified location in the Pacific Ocean known as "Sector B", which was destroyed in a joint operation between the Moebius Four Platoon and the JMSDF a month ago. The AAHW themselves have not claimed immediate responsibility for the existence of the Abyssals, and because they are such a small group with a few outstanding members, it is extremely difficult to track them or their actions. Not even Seal Team Six knows exactly what these men are up to. We also have no information on what the Abyssals' course of actions will be following their successful attack on that base in Okinawa. With their headquarters at Sector B destroyed, who knows if they have already established another headquarters territory elsewhere or if the remnants of the Abyssal forces are now simply to be considered roaming entities that must be rounded up and arrested to prevent them from attacking human settlements without restraint. And while Seal Team Six has warned us that the Abyssals could very well target anywhere in the world to be the site of their next attack, I doubt Germany or any of the European countries will be at risk. Though, I suppose if one country here in Europe did get targeted, it would have to be Germany.

Prinz Eugen has informed me that Retia is already learning how to speak and is starting to carry a comprehensive conversation with her and the other Wunderwaffe girls. Considering that she is learning both German and English at the same time, this means that Retia has inherited the brains of her mother, which I am glad to hear. Prinz Eugen is most definitely the most motherly of the girls here. Perhaps Littorio is the more motherly, but she is not always here to take care of Retia like the others are. Retia is very happy whenever she gets to see Prinz Eugen, and for some odd reason, she elects to simply tap Bismarck on the nose whenever the latter attempts to communicate with her, much to Bismarck's embarrassment. It has been a subject of much debate among the girls.

I did take some time to sit the girls down in the living room and speak with them about the developing situation with Japan and their growing military while snacking on some coffee and cookies. Because both Gernot and Bismarck are fond of good beer, they chose to drink their lagers. Because the Wunderwaffe girls are all naval personnel, my husband and I felt that their opinions on this matter are worth their weight in gold, but Lebe pointed out that they have very minimal actual combat experience in their current forms as ship girls to have a solidified opinion on the matter. But what was for certain was that by themselves, there were too few of them to defend the entirety of Europe, even if they were to join forces with the Italian ship girls and the English ship girls. What they needed what combat experience, and quickly. There was only so much training that they could do on their own.

Gernot suggested to me the idea of perhaps flying the girls to Japan. From what we know, the Japanese are focusing their efforts heavily onto their own platoon of ship girls, for the crux of their military will rest on their shoulders for the war against the Abyssals that is soon to be declared, if it has not already been. There were many ship girls there who served at the Okinawa base for months before the fateful Abyssal attack that have amassed much experience in live combat, so the safest way to give the girls the proper training they needed was to send them to Japan. We discussed this possibility with the girls, and they were all in favor of being sent to Japan for training, so Gernot will contact the Japanese Diet and arrange for their trip tomorrow.

Bismarck, however, did have a word with me in private to tell me that she believed it was best for Germany's future if we, too, expanded our own military. She'd taken a look at Germany's numbers, our army count, our equipment, our logistics, and to her disappointment, everything was woefully lacking. She said that she understands why Germany must have a passive military, but she cannot help but feel disappointed and somewhat angered by the pitiful state of her own military. Why is it, she pointed out, that the victors of the war are the ones who are allowed to wield such huge militaries nowadays? It has been some seven decades since the war - surely people have buried the hatchet by now. But I told her that while it would be nice if she were right, the situation wasn't as simple and straightforward as we would like - that we couldn't militarize in the same way as Japan can. We were not yet attacked by the Abyssals, so we don't quite have the same excuse as Japan does for rearming itself and growing its military powers. And even if we do come under Abyssal attack, there would still be much opposition to our country attempting to amass a strong military to defend against future Abyssal attacks.

"Then if we cannot expand our military," Bismarck told me, "why not construct more of us? Us Wunderwaffe naval personnel."

While that would certainly be quite luxurious, I told Bismarck that we were under contract with Seal Team Six. We wouldn't have more than the five we had now. Besides, just having us was like having an extended family, and it was fun being able to get to know everyone like this. Bismarck admitted that if I put it in such a poignant way, there was no way she could argue against me.


	3. 31-5-2014

**31.5.2014**

Tonight, Gernot will be arriving home late. Some emergency cabinet business showed up, so my husband is taking care of it now. I would have joined him, but he insisted that he go alone so that I could be allowed to look after Retia. Recently, Retia has been pining for me, despite the girls' best efforts to keep her company whilst Gernot and I are away for work.

It is very strange having a child. Perhaps...perhaps it is because I am always so work-oriented, always thinking about I must do for the next day, what my appointments are for the following week, whom I must meet and speak to, how many press conferences there are three days from now, how long tomorrow's cabinet meeting will be, all sorts of things. Or perhaps it does not even have anything to do with being busy with work - maybe I just never expected to even have a child, despite the fact that Gernot and I are college sweethearts.

So whenever I hold Retia, my one-year-old daughter, in my hands, it baffles me, the fact that I am a mother. I know the responsibilities of a new mother, what she must do and all the duties that come with having a newborn baby. Retia is not exactly a newborn, but to me, she still feels like one. But my problem is that I still do not yet feel like Retia has drastically altered my life. And sometimes, I wonder if this is truly a good or bad thing. You might expect a new mother to feel as though her life is turned upside down with the introduction of a new child, but I am not one of them. Maybe it is because of my work. Case in point, only recently have I been responding properly whenever the girls tell me, "Frau, your daughter". I remember the first year following Retia's birth, there were many instances when I didn't even respond whenever my daughter was involved. Especially one instance in which Prinz Eugen spoke to me about heading out to buy more diapers for Retia, and I gave her a funny look as though I didn't even know that I had a daughter. That was quite embarrassing.

Yet, even still, whenever I do hold my own daughter in my hands, I know that this is my child. I just need some more time until the fact that I am a mother can sink in for good.

Retia is learning to walk lately, so we entertained ourselves watching Retia toddle around awkwardly on her little feet. Prinz Eugen perhaps was enjoying herself the most, laughing whenever Retia fell down on the carpet and helped her up each time. Lebe and Max had already made my supper for me when I arrived home, even though they didn't need to.

Never did I ever imagine that these girls would ever amount to become an essential part of my life, my family's lives. Robotic, computerized humanoid robots whose sentience and physiology resemble those of humans' virtually perfectly, borne from a top-secret weapons development program? If the girls began wearing civilian clothes, it would be impossible to tell them apart from any normal human. And now, over the course of one short year, I feel as though they have been with me all my life. Life is strange, it really is.

Prinz Eugen has been experimenting with our spices in the kitchen to find the ideal combination of flavors to add to a chicken recipe she had found the other day. That girl has taken quite the interest in cooking. I believe it started when Gernot and I phoned the girls that we wouldn't be able to make it back home in time to make dinner for everyone because of a meeting that lasted much longer than anticipated. Prinz Eugen decided to take up the responsibilities of cooking herself and managed to make a decent labskaus. Seeing this, I offered to teach Prinz Eugen how to cook, hoping that perhaps she could foster her natural talent for it, and it was quite the worthy investment, since it appears to me that Prinz Eugen is our resident cook more than myself. I rather feel bad about it sometimes, for it is as though I am transferring the responsibility of feeding the family to her, but Prinz Eugen said that she didn't mind. If it came to cooking for us, there was no physical way for her to ever feel unwilling about it. What a sweet girl...but at the same time, I do hope that the others do not eventually come to take Prinz Eugen's cooking for granted. Too often have I seen those with the generous willingness to shoulder others' responsibilities for free become exploited and taken advantage of at the hands of those who simply view the former as expendable resources. I would know, and I _should_ know - I do not work in the field of politics mindlessly.

For dinner, I made everyone grumbeersupp un quetschekuche, U-511's favorite, and some kerscheblotzer for dessert. The girls love my cooking, and it makes me quite happy. I was never a great cook in my own opinion and know plenty others, neighbors and friends and coworkers, who are much better cooks and chefs than I, so the fact that the girls absolutely adore whatever I make is very flattering. Even if I were to botch a dish, perhaps add in too much salt or too little vinegar, they have never complained. Should I be any less of a cook than I am now, I would never know that there was something wrong with my cooking so long as I only fed them.

This being said, however, I am quite happy with the status quo. I learned to cook out of necessity for my husband once we became married, so becoming the world's best cooking mother was never necessarily on my mind. Nor do I plan to cook for anyone outside of our family, and when I say family, the girls are also included as well. Because why not? For nearly a year, except for missions and training and medical enhancement surgeries, these girls have been living with us, partly because of Gernot's order, and we have since bonded together and enjoyed one another's company. And because the girls have all taken the forms of young maidens who appear anywhere from high school students to college kids, it certainly feels like they are _all_ my daughters, along with Retia. They certainly treat Retia as though she were everyone's cute little baby sister, so that helps the image grow. I remember when I once dreamed about the family I would have with Gernot, how many children we would have, but those are memories of college and the years surrounding our marriage, before the punishing days of politics took over our lives. I do know that I was rather dreading the process of raising a child during those days, the sleepless nights as a new mother that I would inevitably have. But with the girls looking after Retia for me so that Gernot and I can concentrate on our work and the girls being daughters of ours in their own right, it is like having six daughters with none of the pain of raising such a large family. It is quite the wonderful feeling, quite the surreal sensation.

Once we ate our late dinner, Bismarck asked me about our progress from yesterday's talk. She is referring to Gernot's suggestion of sending the girls to Japan for additional training under the guidance of the experienced naval personnel who are part of the Japanese Moebius Four Platoon. I answered her truthfully that it was only a mere suggestion, that it was more of my husband's idea than my own. Bismarck insisted that I try my best to see through with it. There was only so much training that was available to the girls here - a fact that all of us are painfully aware of. They can have as many ballistics programs and firing coordinates and angles charts loaded in their brains as they want, but not having actual live combat experience or at least live naval combat training means that their informational assets are ultimately useless, mere theories and no solid evidence or expertise to support them for the girls to know that their knowledge is actually working. And seeing that our own country has no private facility in which the girls can actually train somewhat, Bismarck argued that their only opportunity of fulfilling their intended roles was to seek the guidance of their counterparts in the Far East, the Japanese. They were allies in the past, and in fact, several of our submarines had been sold to the Japanese as war asset, U-511 included among them, so surely they would not mind hosting them as their guests.

I promised Bismarck I would see what I would do for them. But given the state that Japan is quickly becoming, I do not know if even historical alliances will allow my girls to receive the training they require to become effective naval personnel. I will try my best, for the girls have done so much for me so far and I do not want to let them down, but I am not keeping my hopes up.


	4. 1-6-2014

**1.6.2014**

Today, I received another report from Oberfeldwebel Jollenbeck. It states that in light of Japan's increasing militarism, we have been approved to construct another naval personnel to augment the Italian squadron. The Wunderwaffe team has already received the blueprints and coding data to be implemented into this new Italian naval personnel and are already at work building her. The team has been very eager to have an opportunity to work on another ship girl, for this weapons program, clearly, is quite unlike anything they have ever worked on before. So great is their eagerness that the entire team has allegedly been building the blueprint data for future German naval personnel, should we ever receive the green light from Seal Team Six. Jollenbeck commented that when he was summoned to the government facilities that we have allocated to the Wunderwaffe team, he witnessed a scene of fanatical eagerness the nation had never seen since the days of the Third Reich. I hope he did not say that to be extremely derogatory, so I asked him to refrain from comments such as that.

A destroyer this time, by the name of Libeccio. I daresay Lebe and Max will enjoy having another destroyer friend to accompany them.

In order to fulfill my promise to Bismarck that I had made the previous night, I discussed the suggestion that my husband made with him about the true feasibility of such a suggestion. He divulged to me that it was more of a whimsical suggestion than a serious one, that it was something he'd mentioned without completely thinking it through. He seemed surprised that I took his words seriously, because considering the state that Japan is in currently, he couldn't imagine that Japan would actually agree to doing something like accepting our naval personnel for training purposes, even if we do have historically close relations. But when I relayed the arguments that Bismarck had brought up to me yesterday, he understood my sincerity for this kind of suggestion and asked me to give the Americans a call in his stead.

So I spent about half an hour in the morning in my office speaking with Frau Lauren on various topics concerning the ship girls. First, I asked her about the possibility of allowing the production of more German naval personnel. I spoke about several issues of contention, including the fact that while Japan is currently fielding an entire Platoon of naval personnel, Germany and Italy have barely enough to form a squadron put together in comparison. It is unlike me to be pushy and demanding, but I had to speak in a, dare I say, edgy tone in order to maximize my chances of convincing the Seal Team Six member to allow us to produce more naval personnel of our own. Unfortunately, this plan did not work - Frau Lauren stated that they could not allow that, not because they held a grudge against Germany as a nation or because of any direct hostilities against us in particular, but because the simple fact that they were allowing the Germans to produce naval personnel of their own would appear, to the Japanese, like an act of aggression.

Frau Lauren explained that right now, because of the Moebius Four Armament Program, tensions between the United States and Japan quickly deteriorated and are still in the process of deteriorating ever since the incident one month ago, when the Japanese naval base at Okinawa was ambushed and destroyed. She informed me that the Japanese were blaming the loss of the base on the premise that the commander of the base, who, as we'd already been told, was an American fleet commander. She suspected that this was a ploy on the part of the Japanese Diet to wrest total control of the Moebius Four Platoon away from Seal Team Six's hands and claim it as their own, from which point they would be free to do as they wished with their fleet of naval personnel. And because the Moebius Four Armament Pact has already almost completely removed all American military presence in Japan, Japan would not only have a rapidly progressing military that will inevitably soon reach maturity but also a deadly platoon of ship girls who will control the seas and give the new Japanese military an alarming amount of influence over Southeast Asian sea and air traffic. As collateral, the Platoon would also give the Japanese Diet tremendous political leverage in the Southeast Asian sphere and eventually the global political sphere.

Therefore, in light of these deteriorating relations, the Japanese government would surely find out on their own accord if Seal Team Six was leaking orders to us to construct more naval personnel of our own and view this as an American plot to spread the technology behind the Platoon to other nations in an attempt to create a buffer against their own force of naval personnel. They should be already aware of the fact that Germany and Italy technically already have their own small forces of naval personnel, according to Frau Lauren, but given the size of our own detachments, they do not consider us a threat. But as soon as they realize that our naval personnel numbers are growing, they will then treat this occurrence as a direct threat to their own Platoon's strength, by which point all American-Japanese relations will most likely be terminated. Frau Lauren also mentioned that more than likely, Japan would also mark us as potential threats as well, should we develop our own naval personnel forces, and our own relations would also deteriorate. So for the sakes of both of our countries, she declared that any expansions to the Wunderwaffe program in the near future would be folly.

I then asked her about the construction of this new Italian destroyer, Libeccio, who was ordered to be constructed. If Frau Lauren was so adamant in her aforementioned beliefs, then why did her team allow the construction of a new ship girl for the Italians? Given everything she had said, such an order is very blatantly contradictory.

Apparently, according to Frau Lauren, a third Italian ship girl was a long time in the making. Her team had been debating giving the go-ahead for the Wunderwaffe team to construct another naval personnel, and if and when they did, whether it would be another German or another Italian. And because there are currently far more German naval personnel than Italian, they decided on an Italian. While I myself have no qualms about this, at the time, I imagined that should the Wunderwaffe girls hear of this, they would be sorely disappointed indeed.

On the topic of the possibility of sending the Wunderwaffe girls abroad to Japan in a sort of exchange training program with the Moebius Four Platoon, Frau Lauren said that it was honestly a gray area for her, that she could not give ma a definitive answer on the spot. She said that if we were so willing, we could attempt to send a message to the Japanese Diet or the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's headquarters and negotiate some kind of agreement in which our naval personnel could travel to Japan for the sake of training. For obvious reasons, Seal Team Six cannot assist us with this negotiation. She warned me that she and her team could not be held liable for whatever happened to our girls if and when they do travel to Japan. It is as though she is trying to imply that sending them to Japan is a risky venture.

But regardless, it is a venture whose risk is worth the gains that can be provided to the girls. It is for their sake that I am doing this - therefore, whatever risks that accompany it, they must already be aware of. I'm not exactly too sure what _could_ be done to them, in the first place.

Armed with this information, I phoned Gernot during lunch break and let him know the words of Frau Lauren from Seal Team Six, and he determined that he would make the calls necessary to get in touch with the Japanese Diet or whoever he would have to speak to in order to open this negotiation.

I also informed the girls of this when I came back home from work. They were quite happy with the news, but as I'd suspected, they were very disappointed when I told them the reasons behind the new ship girl's construction. But they did not remain bitter about it, thankfully, as the reasons behind them were logical and sound.

"But wouldn't that mean that if there were no hostile relations between America and Japan, we could have more of our own comrades constructed?" Lebe pointed out. "Which would also beg the question, why did this not happen over the past four months? Why is it that the German and Italian fleets have not been expanded at all, while the Americans have been working with the Japanese to enhance and grow the Japanese's?"

None of us knew the answer. There was no way for us to answer it in the first place. My first thought was that perhaps the growing hostilities present in current American-Japanese relations had been going on for a much longer time since we had first heard of them existing ourselves, but then again there would be no way to prove that either unless we ask either Seal Team Six or the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force themselves directly.

Gernot came back home on time tonight, a rare occasion considering our amount of work these days. Retia was the first to greet him at the door, and Gernot lifted her up and swung her around, making her laugh. There was one night when I spoke with my husband when we were in bed to go to sleep, asking him how he felt now that we were parents and he was a father. I shared with him my thoughts on being a new mother, how it still has not clicked for me quite yet that I am a proud mother of a healthy one-year-old baby girl. It turns out that he is the exact opposite - he has fully embraced the odd sensation of being a new father. He loves Retia - when the news covered her birth, the papers and the news shows all displayed photos and video captured by hospital staff of Gernot smothering Retia with kisses. I recall feeling quite embarrassed for him - personally, I can't imagine myself displaying such emotions for my baby girl in front of the eyes of an entire country, but my husband can. I suppose that is why he is Chancellor, the man with the most amount of power in this country - in order to assume such a monumental role, one must have a great heart to lead a country.

For tonight, Prinz Eugen joined forces with Lebe and Max to make for everyone an absolutely gorgeous dinner of hendl and königsberger klopse. Prinz Eugen has been instructing Lebe and Max in the ways of cooking - Prinz Eugen explained to me at the dinner table that the two destroyers had asked if she could teach them how to cook. Originally they wished to ask me to teach them how to cook, but they felt that I was very busy with work and asking me such a request would only serve to hinder me. So at the mention of this, I told Lebe and Max that I was glad to teach them how to make certain dishes, provided that Prinz Eugen taught them the basics of cooking in the interest of time. The two of them were quite happy to learn that I was willing to teach them, and they thanked me properly for my consideration.

Being in the company of such lovely young women warms my heart to no end. If we do eventually work out an agreement with the Japanese to train our girls, I will miss them dearly for however long they are absent.


	5. 2-6-2014

**2.6.2014**

What a joy Sundays have become. I am still reminiscing quite fondly on yesterday.

Ever since the Wunderwaffe girls have joined our household after their military training and preparations, the weekends - namely, Sundays - have never been the same. Gernot and I live on a quite a comfortable property due to our careers, a luxury country house-style villa in the outskirts of the capital city that we had purchased after Gernot's election as chancellor for nearly 3,200,000 euros. 1646 square meters, climatized wine cellar, driveway, full-fledged security system with its own server, seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, one partial bath, fifteen rooms (including bedrooms), three-car garage, and a high-quality kitchen befitting of a five-star chef. While I consider myself not one to flaunt luxuriousness or boast of wealth, I am very willing to be perfectly proud of this hard-earned wealth that my husband and I have built up over the years of steady politics and careful investment. Before the Wunderwaffe girls came to live with us or were even constructed, whenever Gernot and I would have coworkers, friends, or family invited over for dinner or for holiday, I would find myself itching to hear the complements that would inevitably roll off the tongues of our guests in regards to our wonderful and comfortable home. Perhaps this can be accounted as a streak of vanity on my part, but I cannot deny it. After all, every woman should have at least something she is quite proud of, whether she shows it off to the world or not.

But when they arrived at our home to stay with us, the Wunderwaffe girls reacted in such an...outgoing way that it is hard for me to forget the first day they spent here. Perhaps it is because of their relative age that they appear to be that gives them such an ability to react so honestly, but they treated our home like it was a castle built for royalty, which at first took me by surprise, for I have seen far more luxurious homes of others who share the same career as me and my husband. But I say this as though _I_ was the one who needed time to adjust - it took them nearly a week before they began to accept this new life of what they perceived as luxurious comfort.

I remember how Bismarck, upon realizing just what kind of a life she and her compatriots would have to live in this grandiose house of ours henceforth, protested our order to have them stay with us for the time being, since at the time there was not much in way of private housing that could be put aside for them at the expense of the government. She believed that such a life would only serve to degrade everyone's attitudes and punctuality and everything that made them soldiers and ship girls. Without the sharp edge of military life, she stated, she and everyone who had been constructed from the Wunderwaffe program would devolve into nothing more than ordinary female high school or college students, something that she absolutely resents being compared to or being called, for that matter. She even went so far as to request that we transfer everyone to one of the military bases outside of Berlin at the very least, and that she would not stand to find herself rotting away in an environment of softness and comfort. Unfortunately, she was the only one among her peers who felt this way, and the inevitable tide of peer pressure motioning to stay with us, combined with the lack of separate housing, whether civilian or military, finally caused Bismarck to desist.

Bismarck is a hard-working young lady. Initially it was difficult to overcome the hurdle of addressing Bismarck as a female, her name being taken directly from the historic Otto von Bismarck. She is extremely work-oriented, and if she senses that you are also in the same mindset as she is, she becomes very cooperative and friendly. This is quite a lovely characteristics for both me and my husband, for whenever we have had to take care of manual labor around the house (we have never kept maids or the like, for we enjoy the little things in life such as cleaning our own home), Bismarck always volunteers to help, and sometimes at moments when we really need it the most and forget that we can just ask one of the girls to help out. If we need an errand done when it is inconvenient for either Gernot or I to complete, Bismarck is always ready to take care of the matter.

However, Bismarck does have a tendency to take this quality too far sometimes...often to the point of annoyance. During the first week or so of her arrival here at our home, whenever Bismarck would complete a chore or a task, she would always come asking for more, and sometimes she would actually think that we were making fun of her by telling her that there was nothing else she needed to do, so I had to sit Bismarck down in my study one night and explain to her that while it was great that she wanted to always be working, she needed to understand that there is nothing wrong with taking a bit of time to relax, and that not everything was about work, work, work. Bismarck explained to me that this was because she loved feeling a sense of accomplishment, no matter how large or small. This made me think about all those times when Prinz Eugen was always showering Bismarck in praise, so I asked Bismarck if it wasn't so much as her wanting to feel a sense of accomplishment as much as it was her simply wanting to be praised. Bismarck finally admitted that she just liked being praised. That puts a smile on my face. So I promised I would give her lots of praise whenever she asked for it.

Bismarck is also surprisingly quite studious. After we had that talk in which I told her that it was alright for her to relax a bit more, I found Bismarck in our personal library, reading through historic German literature, the likes of Mann, Roth, Kafka, Musil, and Döblin. Because she is an enhanced human being with computerized senses, Bismarck is a very speedy reader, and she and I have spent many a weekend discussing great German literature. It is very easy to see that Bismarck has a sharp intuition and wit about her that would have classified her as a very intelligent human being, should she have been born a human and not constructed a ship girl. There has been many a time that I myself have told her, "Bismarck, should you ever retire from military service and enter civilian life, with your beautiful looks and sharpness, you could easily be one of Germany's next great leaders." But every time she rejects it out of politeness, saying that she would rather serve her country by fighting its wars than to push its pencils.

Hence, given all of these qualities, it is only natural for a gorgeous and intelligent maiden like Bismarck to carry herself with an air of confidence - or, dare I say, arrogance. But despite this, Bismarck does have quite the affectionate side to her. It seems she holds an almost stereotypical weakness to anything that she deems cute or adorable. Pets, dolls, plushies, small animals, even to a certain extent little children like Retia - anything of that nature smites Bismarck's heart, and she has admitted to me that she finds it quite difficult to resist her urge to be attracted to anything of that sort of nature. Because she practically lives with Retia now, Bismarck is good with my daughter and has gotten used to the feeling of being around her, but the first few weeks held a different story: every time she saw my daughter, Bismarck would run over, pick up Retia, and proceed to swing her around in circles. At first, I thought this would frighten my baby, but Retia didn't seem to mind. If anything, Retia simply seemed slightly annoyed at being swung around so much, as she would sometimes growl at Bismarck and smack her on the forehead to make her let go. Quite the memories of their first weeks in our home indeed.

Today was family fun night. Gernot said that there were a couple of American action movies he wanted to watch that were on his backlog of movies that he's been compiling, so we watched those for tonight. Luckily, I can appreciate a good action flick here and there, and because the Wunderwaffe girls are all part of the military, they were all for it as well. But I ended up watching the reactions of the girls as we watched through Gernot's movies on our big television in the living room, for their reactions served as my entertainment for the night, not necessarily the movies themselves. Bismarck was glued to the television; having never seen movies of such quality before, she, out of everyone, was the most easily swayed by all the special effects and fancy editing of the movies, and she and Prinz Eugen, the more extroverted girls of the bunch, rode a roller coaster of reactions throughout the night, whooping and cheering at the protagonists' explosive exit to safety and tearing up at the plot-device-scripted death of a beloved comrade. I found myself constantly smiling at the enjoyment that the girls were getting out of the movies, so I didn't mind not being able to actually watch the movies themselves.

I wonder why it is that seeing these girls be normal girls is so enjoyable. Although I doubt "normal" girls their age would enjoy American action movies.


	6. 3-6-2014

**3.6.2014**

I have been notified by one of our head programmers of the Wunderwaffe team that our newest fleet girl, the Italian destroyer Libeccio, will be completed sometime next week. With this knowledge, I have passed it on to Gernot, who will contact our good friend Marco Santini to send Littorio and Roma, the two Italian fleet girls, up here to Germany to receive their newest comrade. Should all go well, the two Italian battleships should arrive sometime within the next few days, which excites the girls quite so, except for Bismarck. She seems to possess an inherent rivalry with Roma, and admittedly, they are not on the greatest of terms.

During the break of our cabinet conference meeting, Gernot took me aside and spoke to me in private to inform me that he has been having an uncharacteristically difficult time getting into contact with important members of the Japanese Diet, the people with whom he must speak to arrange for a joint fleet exercise program with the Japanese fleet girl fleet. (That sounds a bit awkward to write.) Normally, in the past, he had no trouble contacting persons of interest when it came to German-Japanese relations, so we do not quite understand what the difference is now. Well, we kind of do, actually...this _is_ the military we are talking about, after all, and it would make sense that the Japanese government is doing their best to keep their strongest naval asset secure. But the fact that Gernot, the chancellor of Germany, cannot contact anyone so far in regards to this issue is unreasonable, to say the least. It is almost as though Japan is trying to hide the existence of its ship girls. While it is certainly true that ship girls like theirs and like our own Wunderwaffe girls are of top classification levels, we know for a fact that both countries involved here are fully aware of the existence of each other's ship girls. This should be no secret, yet I cannot help but get the feeling that Japan is trying to make it so. Either this, or somebody in charge is deliberately trying to sell this image.

In other relevant news, the National Democratic Party of Germany is on the move once again. Because this is my own personal journal and I do not have to be anchored to the pedantic stiffness that is political correctness, I shall simply refer to them as Neo Nazis. We received a report of a rally in Leipzig, and it swelled to some several hundred before local police arrived to break up the rally.

NDP rallies like this have been on the rise, numerically speaking, both in terms of number of rallies and number of demonstrators. They have been so since two years ago – at first, it seemed normal, as Germany has seen the occasional Neo Nazi rally every once in a while. But last year was when we first noticed the increasing frequency of such rallies. And somehow, there is no denying that these rallies are becoming more and more popular. And we want to know why. We had commissioned polling groups in the past to gather consensus data on the people's opinions on the NDP and their reactions to such rallies, and the data they gathered overwhelmingly points to a general public disapproval of the NDP and their rallies, and this data has stayed consistent up to the present. Of course, I am aware that we cannot rely on polls to measure such data with perfect accuracy, but given this knowledge, it is undeniably strange for the rallies to be swelling in number. It has gotten to the point where the rest of the Bundestag wishes to pass a law limiting the number and influence of these NDP rallies, which Gernot has refused to address just yet in public, since such a law would still be viewed as infringement upon freedom of speech and expression, but pressure is growing, and both my husband and I know that this issue must be addressed soon, especially if more rallies continue to pop up around the country.

In other words, long story short, there is something else that is causing these rallies to sprout. Perhaps an external influence, an outside group. If the German people in general have no reason to support the extremist views and opinions of an extreme right-wing political party, why does it seem like their rallies are becoming stronger and more influential? It simply does not add up. Therefore, we can only venture to guess that their strength comes not from our own people, but from outside supporters. Our cabinet has decided to request traffic data and statistics from our border security monitoring inbound and outbound traffic, both people and cargo.

Upon sharing these news with the girls upon our return home for the night, the ship girls have all enthusiastically offered up their services to partake in national security. Obviously, Bismarck was the most enthusiastic among them. But Gernot and I calmed them, for the time being. Right now, although the rallies are definitely a concern, they are nowhere near levels of danger that they pose a significant enough threat to national security. And even then, I reminded the girls that as part of the Wunderwaffe, they are all highly classified pieces of military technology, courtesy of the American special forces team that first developed the technology behind making their existences and lives possible. Out of respect for Seal Team Six's wishes to not reveal their existences to the public, we could not assign such tasks to them.

Today has been a long day, so I shall stop here. Retia is already having lots of fun toddling around in my room, so I shall tuck her to bed and prepare for tomorrow as well. Lebe, Max, U, and Prinz Eugen have watched me give good-night kisses to my daughter, and U had the uncharacteristic bravery to ask one for herself, and now the rest of them want to follow suit. I am getting the sense that they are growing to see me as a sort of mother figure, which I can sympathize with. They are, after all, young maidens with no parental figures of their own. Gernot and I are the closest they have to parents, which goes very well with my sense of mothership to the girls. If that is the case, then I shall rise up to the occasion.


	7. 4-6-2014

**4.6.2014**

The Doctor came for a visit today. His real name is Koloman Faust, but he likes to be referred to as Khal.

Dr. Khal has been Retia's doctor ever since her birth. When she was born, Retia had abnormally high levels of bilirubin in her body, so we were warned that the jaundice she had been born with may end up causing kernicterus, so Gernot and I hired the skills of Dr. Khal to help us monitor Retia's condition around the clock. Dr. Khal has been quite a godsend for us. Because Gernot and I are frequently quite busy with work, Dr. Khal has sometimes been the only person available to look after Retia at all, besides his duties in monitoring Retia's bilirubin levels. Eventually he concluded that Retia's danger of contracting kernicterus was gone by the time she was eight weeks old, but by that time, Gernot and I had gotten to know him to the point where he could have been our lifelong friend. Since then, he has paid the occasional visit here at our home for checkups, since Gernot, ever since Retia's close call with kerniceterus, is prone to paranoia when it comes to our daughter's health. It is much more convenient than taking her to a hospital, even with our connections to all the best medical facilities in Germany because of our status. I believe the English phrase here is "friends with benefits".

The Wunderwaffe girls have also taken a liking to Dr. Khal. Prior to today, they had seen him only once, but that last time he had paid a visit he stayed to talk to the girls quite late into the night, so much so that he had took up our offer of staying the night in our home. Because we trust him as a close friend, Gernot and I had told him about the Wunderwaffe girls and their true nature, and upon learning this, Dr. Khal had been, to put it lightly, mesmerized. "It appears that history is mocking us!" he had remarked with quite the tone of sarcastic irony. Despite that, he gave his concessions to the American team who shared their technology with us, saying that they had done quite the marvelous job recreating German warships as perfect human beings. He had conversed with the girls for a long time, testing their cognitive abilities and their interactive capabilities to determine that if Gernot and I had never informed him of the girls' true nature, he could have never told them apart from normal people.

"If current technology allows for this, then the possibilities of advancements in all fields of medical science are limitless," Dr. Khal had concluded happily before he went on to discuss the ethics of the same technology that allowed the existence of the ship girls with those same girls.

The girls were all quite happy to see the doctor pay another visit, for they remember him well. Lebe and Max baked a cup of their finest creme brulee and served it to Dr. Khal, who felt honored to be served such a fine dessert by the likes of those girls. I informed him that I had been teaching the basics of cooking to them, and they had learned all of this on their own, and Lebe and Max looked quite proud of their achievement when the doctor gave it his official seal of approval.

"Your girls treat me better than my wife does, and here I was thinking that I was blessed with such a loving family to begin with," he told me. "I hope you don't mind if I tell my family that we're all coming to stay here for winter vacation." That made us all laugh, but me especially.

After that, he gave Retia the usual checkup and found nothing concerning. At first, like any baby meeting people other than her own parents for the first time, Retia did not take to Dr. Khal very nicely. But because Retia is a sharp girl, she quickly grasped that the doctor wasn't someone bad, so soon she saw him as an uncle figure, a good friend of her parents who always gave her little gifts like a small bear doll or a tiny Rubik's Cube that she managed to solve within two weeks without anyone telling her how to solve it.

At the girls' insistence, the doctor stayed awhile with us, but only for a few hours because of another appointment later this evening. During then, Prinz Eugen and Bismarck discussed medical and technological ethics with him in the living room while Retia sat on his lap rubbing his chin like a magic lamp while Lebe, Max, and U helped me prepare some dinner for the doctor packed in some tupperware - _berliner_ with strawberry filling, for to my knowledge, Dr. Khal loves himself some pastries. For some reason, Retia finds herself easily captivated by the sight of Dr. Khal's bald head.

After Dr. Khal departed for his next appointment, I headed back to my office, since I had come home specifically to receive the doctor as our guest and left Retia in the care of the girls. Because of the double round-trip, I am a bit more tired than I usually am tonight, but that is quite alright. Seeing the doctor again is a special treat that I am finding myself appreciating more and more. Not because he has been visiting less frequently, but because the burden of work and the lack of people I like to call real friends at work are taking their toll on this thirty-eight-year-old body.

Hmmm...because I am still in the writing mood and I don't have anything else on my mind at the moment, I'd like to put my thoughts down on paper about Prinz Eugen, since I started with Bismarck.

I have already mentioned the motherliness that Prinz Eugen has exuded, but I feel a need to elaborate it further, for this tenderness of hers is special. Ordinarily, a distant onlooker would observe Prinz Eugen's affection for those around her as exceptional caregiving, perhaps even as motherliness itself if the onlooker is to be quite observational. But she shows and maintains this care for everyone she meets. It does not matter who: whether the person she takes care of is Dr. Khal visiting to give Retia her checkup, my husband when he returns from work late at night, her fellow sisters-at-arms chasing Retia around the house, or me, Prinz Eugen always devotes 120% of herself to making sure she can make us as happy as can be. She has limitless energy, and she never tires. (If she ever does, she has certainly yet to show it.) She has an infinite amount of patience, and for the sake of anyone she cares about, Prinz Eugen can move mountains if she so wished. I swear to God, Prinz Eugen is well on her way to becoming the world's greatest mother. If the day should ever come that these girls become decommissioned and released to civilian life, I should like to meet Prinz Eugen's prospective husband simply to tell him, "You are the world's luckiest groom". Especially at the wedding reception. That ought to leave an impression on him. Heh.

Why the world's best mother? Well...let us consider the qualities a prospective mother ought to have to be a good one. She should be willing to put her family above all else. She should be nurturing, caring, and loving. Is there anything I am forgetting? If I am, it doesn't matter - Prinz Eugen has all such qualities. She is not even a mother herself right now and yet she is already the world's best mother. Should Retia consider her a better mother figure when she grows up, I will not even be mad about it. Prinz Eugen is an angel - an angel among men. Should I be any more religious, I would be ashamed that lowly figures such as men should have to marry an angel like her.

I mean...especially when I think about the times when she handles my daughter. She treats Retia like she is her own daughter. She sings lullabies to her, she changes her diapers, she feeds her, she reads to her, she plays with her...Prinz Eugen is single-handedly making me truly regret my career choice in politics. When Prinz Eugen first began taking care of my daughter, I sometimes felt a little jealous, I must admit, when I realized just how much affection she was giving my daughter, and how Retia was accepting all of it. I was afraid that Retia would gravitate towards Prinz Eugen as her mother than myself, but thankfully I realized that this was definitely not the case. Now, I just simply feel thankful that there is someone like her to take care of my family when I am away or if something happens to either me or my husband. I have all the confidence in the world that Prinz Eugen alone can protect my daughter if her parents are not able to.

Perhaps her only flaw is her obsession with Bismarck. And yes, as much as I want to go easy on Prinz Eugen's only visible character flaw, I must deliver the honest truth. Prinz Eugen's obsession with Bismarck is so bizarre that at first, I thought perhaps Prinz Eugen had been constructed with some sort of mental glitch or programming error until I confirmed with the Wunderwaffe team that it was in fact not an error, but instead a character feature of hers. Eventually I did become accustomed to Prinz Eugen's infatuation with Bismarck, especially when I realized that Bismarck rather liked to feed off Prinz Eugen's obsession with her, but it still does not sit very well with me even to this day. I just cannot help but feel that such infatuation cannot be healthy. I suppose it is nice that the cruiser is so affectionate towards her battleship sister, but even then. I think perhaps this is because it is strange for normal people like me to come across someone these days who is not hesitant in gushing their love for their siblings all the time. Certainly such behavior can be seen as strange in the eye of the modern public.

But more than that, could this simply be an act? That Prinz Eugen is only behaving like this because of the particular reason? But if that is the case, what should that reason be? I cannot understand it if Prinz Eugen indeed does have an ulterior motive for such infatuated behavior towards Bismarck. And she does so with such vigor and enthusiasm! One cannot look into the eyes, the heart and soul of that girl when she acts like how she does whenever she interacts with Bismarck and claim that Prinz Eugen is motivated by secondary reasons for her behavior. Like it or not, that is Prinz Eugen's true nature. How do I know this? Besides the months that I have spent living with her under the same roof, because of my assertion earlier that she is the world's most perfect mother, by way of logical deduction, she cannot simultaneously be the world's greatest actor. Such professions are too different to be packaged together in one body, no matter how talented. If such is the case, I can safely say that my life is a complete and utter lie.

After writing this, I feel like the biggest hypocrite. A mother myself, working in politics as the wife of Germany's chancellor? Hmph, if only there were a way to eat my own words. I disgust even myself.

But I suppose it is alright for Prinz Eugen to show such crazed passion for her battleship sister. Should she not have had this flaw, Prinz Eugen would have literally been the most perfect human being in the world. If she didn't have this flaw, the world would not be able to handle the purity of this angel. It is a heartbreaking shame that some day, this angel is most likely going to nurture the seas with fire and metallic brimstone.


	8. 5-6-2014

**5.6.2014**

We have received reports of another Abyssal attack earlier today at 1230 hours, this time on the Yokosuka Naval Yards in Tokyo Bay, near the Japanese capital city.

Our informants in Japan and the American Seal Team Six, with their own informants in the country, have determined that at 1230 hours Japan Standard Time, a fleet of about twenty Abyssal destroyers, ten Abyssal light cruisers, seven Abyssal heavy cruisers, two Abyssal battleships, three Abyssal light carriers, and two Abyssal capital personnel launched a massive attack against the Yokosuka Naval Yards near Yokosuka Naval Air Base. Their objective was unclear, but they have caused significant infrastructure and personnel damage, mainly against the Japanese fleet of ship girls who had been present at the naval yards due to naval combat training that they appear to have there every Monday and Thursday.

I am being told that five Japanese fleet personnel have been killed today as a direct result of the Abyssal attack, among other heavy casualties. About 35% of the naval yards have suffered some kind of damage, and the warship destroyers docked at the Yokosuka Naval Yards as their home port have suffered moderate damage as well.

This is the first incident of Abyssal attack since their ambush on the Japanese base at Okinawa one month ago. The Americans have told me over a phone call earlier today that this particular attack is even more significant than their previous assault at Okinawa, for this could mean a resurgence in Abyssal activity. I suggested that this could also mean a full-scale war between the Japanese and the Abyssals, but the Americans have ruled that out, for they pointed out that should this indeed be a full-scale war, it would have made more sense for the Abyssals to hit multiple naval bases at the same time to deal as much damage as possible in one single day's worth of operations. It was clear that the Abyssals, judging by how they attacked Yokosuka Naval Yards, knew of the base beforehand; in other words, this was not some kind of attack that happened because they simply stumbled upon the base on accident. Therefore, knowing the Abyssals, the Americans figured that they should have led a multi-pronged attack on Japanese naval bases if this really did mean war between those two entities. So the possibility of war can be ruled out for now.

Oberfeldwebel Jollenbeck, who is also heavily involved with our Bundesnachrichtendienst, has confided to me that he is very nervous about the situation that Germany is in now, perhaps even the world. He told me that he is getting a bad feeling about these NDP rallies and the Abyssal attacks in Japan. While he has no solid evidence to base his sentiments, he feels that somehow, in some crazy way, these two events are connected, even if by a tiny thread. The only piece of support he can give to defend his claim is that both incidents are occurrences of odd circumstances, circumstances that nobody, not even the insane, could have predicted accurately. While I hesitate to agree with him so hastily, I cannot help but feel that he may be onto something here.

The oberfeldwebel also informed me that he will appeal to the Bundestag for an increased military spending budget for the next fiscal year. In the wake of these incidents, he feels, like many of us who are heavily involved in the defense industry, we must do what we can to strengthen our nation's forces, especially considering how weak our armed forces currently are. If two attacks on Japanese military installations can deal this much damage, imagine what our own country's assets should suffer should we be the next target. Of course, as stated before, we cannot be sure that we are to be targeted too by these Abyssal forces, but if the intel that we are housing ship girls of our own should ever leak out, most definitely by then we shall be subject to the possibility of attack by these same Abyssals.

But what concerns us more, right now, is how the Japanese government will react to this new attack in regards to our Wunderwaffe girls. Because in one sense, one could take this situation and view it as a positive net gain for us in the sense that the Japanese Diet will be more willing to accept our request to put our girls in a joint training operation and use them as a buffer against future Abyssal attacks. I do not prefer putting it in such a manner, but the girls truly wish to undergo proper training of any kind to improve themselves, and the sooner the better. But to play the devil's advocate (and really this is the more realistic result), the Japanese government can instead shelter themselves even more and close their communications off even more, and it has already been proven hard enough to get a hold of them to begin with. They will consider themselves victims, and they will use this incident as legitimization to cut diplomatic ties with countries they view as suspicious.

Plus, this latest Abyssal attack is sure to attract a lot of attention from the Japanese media. Apparently, Abyssal combat aircraft flew over the Miura Peninsula and was spotted by many civilian eyewitnesses, and this has struck ripples throughout the Japanese public media. According to the Americans, every major Japanese newspaper and news station is covering this incident, and the NHK is planning to produce an hour-long segment on this incident before this week is out. Already the Japanese tabloids are claiming alien attacks, and the more right-wing ones are pointing fingers at Americans, blaming the possibility of American saboteurs. Speaking of right-wing politics, I expect that this incident will quickly become the trough from which ring-wingers in Japan will feed their political commentary over the nation. Already, ever since the Moebius Armament Pact went into effect, Japanese right-wingism has been on the rise, but now, it is clear that left-wing Japanese political commentary will no longer dominate Japanese politics as it had ever since the war. The Japanese people will be called to defend their homeland, and perhaps a new breed of xenophobia will be piped into the country. This is propheteering, I'm sure, but it is the natural way that things should unfold; I will be very surprised if this does not indeed happen.

The point is that the Japanese public will find out eventually what kind of enemy has been attacking them for the past month. The secret will be out - that there exist these enemies from the sea called the Abyssals, and that there are superhuman beings known as "ship girls" who are working to protect them and combat this Abyssal threat.

Perhaps this is the most dangerous implication of this incident at the Yokosuka Naval Yards. Eventually, the world will find out about the existence of ship girls. The world will realize that we now have the technology to produce these superhumans, these fleet personnel. Once the secret is out, the world will be plunged into another quagmire of furious, stormy debate on the legitimacy of such beings. And that will be just another hell none of us want or need to deal with.

The girls are very worried and agitated by this developing situation. Bismarck is, as usual, the most opinionated of them, declaring that it is cowardly of allies to simply sit around whilst their allies are getting attacked. Prinz Eugen, Lebe, and U are all very concerned about their counterparts in Japan and are saddened to hear that the fleet of naval personnel present at the scene of the battle have suffered heavy casualties, and Max, the usual serious one out of the bunch, has no words to share, only simple and stoic acceptance of the situation. They have asked me what has become of their request to be transferred to Japan in the joint exercise program, and I have assured them that my husband has been doing all he can to make this a reality. In fact, he has yet to return home today, even though it is already 23:40, because he is investigating the effects of this disaster on German soil.

But even Max is getting restless. All of the girls are. They have been constructed as naval personnel charged with combating enemy threats at sea. Their duty is calling to them, but they have no way of responding to it. I hope that for both their own country's sake and for our girls' sake, the Japanese will somehow find it in themselves to accept our offer of joint exercise and agree to have these girls flown out to Japan to serve alongside their own forces. Our girls may not be much numerically, but I have confidence that they can become any nation's finest fighting force. They just need a chance.


	9. 6-6-2014

**6.6.2014**

I have been informed today that social media regarding the Abyssal attack on Yokosuka Naval Yards have been put on the Internet. Some members of our counter-intelligence division, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, who are in charge of monitoring the general activities of public media, both national and international, have discovered evidence of such media in several German message board sites. As the more Internet-savvy coworkers of mine have stated wisely, once things are put on the Internet, they can never be removed entirely.

Judging by the fact that we have not been receiving frantic calls from standard members of other European governments, public knowledge about yesterday's Abyssal attack on Japan's naval district is not widespread yet, so we can breathe easy for now. But it is common knowledge that the public is soon to find out about this attack. It is only a matter of time, and Gernot and I have been spending the entire day today taking steps to prepare our government and our armed forces. We have put the Bundeswehr on DA-4 (Defensive Alert, a system similar to the American DEFCON system, except ours only takes into account national defense, not nuclear war), but the Bundestag, in an emergency meeting that we scheduled earlier today, refused to authorize increased military budget spending. Therefore, the most we can do is tell our commanding officers in the field and in our military bases throughout the country to ready the troops to be deployed with thirty minutes.

We also received a call from the British counter-intelligence agency, MI-6, from Sir Harvey Sinclair specifically. The British, too, have received word of the attack and have been preparing their own fleet of naval personnel to remain on high alert, and Sir Sinclair recommended that for the sake of the protection of the continent, we best do the same. I replied that we were taking as many steps as we could on our end to ensure that no such attack would occur here without severe retaliation, but unfortunately, as it stood, because of our Wunderwaffe's relative inexperience with naval combat due to the lack of military infrastructure with which to train the ship girls and our severely limited military spending, the British fleet would have to do most of the work, should an Abyssal attack be due sometime on this side of the world too.

At this, Sir Sinclair asked me if it was alright for me to go more into detail about our situation, so at his insistence, I divulged the more sensitive details about our military budget fiasco. I also informed him, with my husband's knowledge, that we had been trying to contact the Japanese to see if we could not arrange some kind of joint training program with their Platoon of naval personnel, but so far we had gotten no response. Therefore, Sir Sinclair offered to host a joint training program at the RNAS Prestwick Naval Air Station at our earliest convenience. He pointed out that it was imperative that the Wunderwaffe girls get in their practice and training as quickly as possible, for he took this new Abyssal terrorist threat very seriously. In addition, he also made the argument that in the wake of Japan's rising right-wing militarism, it might not be a great idea to send over all of our ship girls to their discretion where we could not monitor their activities, or the activities of the Japanese with them, for that matter.

"Right now, given the current political atmosphere of that country and its volatile state of national defense after these last two attacks, it is perhaps in our best interest to help one another here in Europe. Surely you know the relations right now between Japan and the United States? It is not pretty, to say the least. It would only make things worse should Germany or any other country interfere," he stated.

While he certainly made a valid point, I was hesitant on accepting his offer. For one, the British fleet personnel, while I am sure they have been training quite vehemently ever since the American Seal Team Six team shipped them over to England, still have no concrete battle experience. Actual battle experience is what my ship girls desire, to train under the guidance and expertise and mentorship of other ship girls, preferably from those who had served in that Japanese base in Okinawa under that American commander, who have been in and fought plenty of combat scenarios against the Abyssals. As helpful as it may be, committing the Wunderwaffe girls into a joint exercise program with the British fleet personnel, that is not what my girls want. Besides, while I have never explicitly talked to them about how they think of their British counterparts, I cannot imagine that they would have such fond memories of them.

But more pressing for me was the British government as well. Not the entity, but a person. This person I am talking about is Sir Alton Holmwood, the current British Secretary of Defense. The problem with this man is that he is very well known for publicly making anti-German statements. In fact, he is quite well known for his snobbish behavior and attitude towards foreigners outside of his own country, but towards Germany especially. I hear that he had ancestors who had suffered quite a lot during the second World War, namely during the air raid campaigns that Germany launched against Britain, so I can understand his sentiments, but for the sake of my ship girls, I decided to eventually decline Sir Sinclair's offer. I cannot allow my girls to come under the jurisdiction of a man such as Sir Holmwood, because if I had agreed to this joint exercise program, the girls would have had to be subjected to the military law and authority of the local British military headquarters, at the head of which Sir Holmwood stands. Lord knows what that man would do to the girls during their time there.

Even still, this decision was not an easy one to make. It was a very tough choice, but in the end I want the girls to train without having to worry about extraneous circumstances...but I suppose you could also apply this same logic to our attempts to establish a joint exercise program with the Platoon in Japan. I can only conclude that political matters such as these are quite complicated and never have easy answers. Some things just do not change from my college days as a political science major, do they.

I also received a call from the Americans, this time by team leader Sanford. He informed me that he and his squadmate, Deimos, had entered a top-secret prototype weapon development contract with one of our most famous firearms producers here in Germany, Heckler & Koch about two years ago. He explained very briefly that during one of their operations in Singapore, he and his squadmates from Seal Team Six were able to recover an enemy weapons blueprint that caught his team's attention. He and his squadmate Deimos were especially interested to see if developing such a weapon from their captured blueprint could actually be possible, because it was supposedly a few generations ahead of current conventional military firearms technology. Earlier this year, with the attack on the Japanese base at Okinawa, Sanford hastened the final production stages with the employees at H&K and was finally able to produce this prototype weapon.

He informed me that three executive agents from Heckler & Koch would be at my doorstep in the morning tomorrow to take me to one of their more clandestine production factories in the outskirts of Berlin to show me the fruits of their labors over the past two years. He also specifically asked me to take U-511 with me to visit the factory and only U-511, but he did not go into further depth about why only her. I suspect that this prototype weapon has been built specifically for U-511, but I cannot understand at the moment what makes U more special than the other girls to be able to use this weapon any more than they can. I suppose we shall find out more about this mysterious weapon tomorrow...this " _Wunderwaffe_ ", if I must make a pun.

I hear that H&K is an excellent firearms manufacturer, even though I am not a firearm enthusiast myself. I suppose I can rest easy about this one. I have since told U-511 of our plans tomorrow, and undoubtedly this has made the girls quite curious.

But back to the question of a joint exercise program, what should become of my ship girls, then, now that I have turned down Sir Sinclair's offer of such a training regimen? The Japanese are demonstrating no willingness to reply to our attempts to make contact with them. At this rate, we cannot devote our limited energy to trying to make contact with an uncooperative government, for we have more pressing issues that require our attention. Gernot himself has told me that he cannot spend his coffee breaks and his lunch breaks in his office trying to dial the numbers of different members of the Japanese Diet to see if he can somehow get a hold of them to talk to, and I asked him to keep at it for another few days, but if the weekend expires with no reply, then we must give up our efforts. Should that happen, how should we hope to give our Wunderwaffe girls the training that they require? By that point, _any_ kind of training would suffice. Perhaps we may even be forced to resort to handing the girls back over to the American Seal Team Six, for surely they know how to train them - the only problem with this, of course, is that our Wunderwaffe team would object heavily to such a plan, for they want to be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of our own ship girls, not the Americans. Seeing that they are quite essential in covert government operations, I wish not to get on their bad side.

And perhaps I have already stated this concern in a previous journal entry, but should we do find a suitable training regimen to send the girls off to, I will then have to think of a way to balance my life with work and my daughter Retia once again, before the girls had come to live with us. And because I have spoiled myself by letting the girls look after my daughter, I must then transition back to how life was before the girls came in to my life. It's not something that I am looking forward to. And because they are involved in the military, because of what (or _who,_ I should say) they embody, if I send them away, there is a chance that they may never come back. Who knows. I would be lying if I said I am not apprehensive. I want Retia, my daughter, to know these girls for a long time and remember them as her lifelong friends, not as a bunch of people who took care of her when she was just a baby.

Retia wants to sit on my lap as I type on my laptop, so she is watching me type into my word document while sitting on my lap. I have turned off the touchpad because she seems to have taken a liking to tapping it all the time. I suppose she learned that from my husband, who also oftentimes works on his laptop with Retia hanging about watching him curiously. But this time, I notice that Retia is keenly observing the words that I am typing, following them as they appear on the screen. Prinz Eugen has told me that she has seen Retia "read" the books that Bismarck is reading in the library, and although I suspect that Retia is teaching herself how to read somehow, she shouldn't be able to read this much.

Or is she? Perhaps she is far more intelligent than we ever thought she would be.

As I thought, when I asked Retia to read some of the things I was typing on the computer, she didn't say much back to me. Perhaps I am just inflating the matter.


	10. 7-6-2014

**7.6.2014**

Today has been a very surprising day in many ways.

As stated in yesterday's entry, I took U and together, we were driven to the secret production factory, where we found, to our surprise, the American operatives Sanford and Deimos themselves. They said that they had flown in earlier that morning for a variety of reasons, and this was one of them. Another reason was that they wanted to introduce us to the new fleet girl whom we were notified of earlier this week, Libeccio, the Italian destroyer. In addition, Littorio and Roma, the two Italian battleship girls who had already been constructed, had flown in just hours before our arrival at the factory with Marco to also greet their new Italian comrade.

I must say, the Wunderwaffe team has done a fantastic job constructing Libeccio. She looks very much so like her people of the region in which she had been constructed - her first iteration, I should say. Marco, who went through the trouble of looking up historical information on Libeccio, told me that she had been originally built in Ancona, further down the Adriatic Coast, which explains her darker skin tone compared to her battleship sisters. Littorio and Roma are quite happy to have a destroyer child as part of their small fleet, Littorio more so, for she spent hours fawning over their new arrival. Libeccio also happened to get along very well with U. It was very sweet watching them interact - they were behaving like two puppies, U being the more shy one and Libeccio being the more outgoing one.

Now down to business - Sanford and Deimos took all of us into the factory, and the Heckler & Koch engineers who had been working with them greeted us to reveal the new prototype weapon that they had been working on specifically for U-511's exclusive use. U sounded very surprised by this, as much as I was when I first heard of this from Sanford yesterday, the fact that there had been a weapon being developed specifically for her. She stammered quite adorably to the American operatives that she didn't know what she had done to deserve such an exclusive award - but Deimos simply replied that it wasn't because of what she _had_ done, but instead because of what she _would_ do. Somehow these words seem very prophetic, but this definitely seems like this weapon that they had developed for U was an incredibly heavy investment. And so it seemed - after arriving in their innermost laboratory, the Americans and the H&K engineer team finally showcased to us their classified product.

In reality, this was not a single weapon but instead a set of weapons, two pieces of equipment to be exact. The first piece was a vest that looks very similar to a downsized anti-explosive flak jacket. This vest was to act as a cloaking device for U, turning her from a combat submarine into a stealth submarine, which sounds very good to me. I am no military expert, but when U tried on the vest and turned invisible, it wowed everyone in the room, even the engineers who had built them, since they had never tried it on their intended test subject, U, before today. They considered the vest an immediate success, and U was quite thrilled to be the owner of such an awesome new piece of equipment. I should imagine that invisibility is quite the powerful ability, even for ship girls.

(I say that I am no military expert, but my good friend and coworker Heidi Nussenbaum, the Minister of Defense with whom we had been working with to get the Bundestag to pass those laws to expand military spending, has gone to great lengths to familiarize me with the specifications of our armed forces. Please blame her for possessing more knowledge about military matters than I should as a civilian.)

The second piece of equipment was a combat rifle. Now, this was no ordinary rifle. Its name was the H&K C-10 Canister Rifle, Mk. VI, meaning that this was the sixth generation prototype that had been manufactured so far in the weapon's development cycle. When they first unveiled it, it did not look so impressive - I had seen other sniper rifles, particularly those they call "anti-materiel" sniper rifles, that were much bigger. This C-10 rifle, when they first revealed it, appeared to have the length of one of our current standard-issue rifles, the G-36, with its overall length perhaps no more than 75 centimeters. But there was more to it than met the eye - Deimos asked U to pick up the rifle, and when she did, it suddenly expanded to a length of 1300 millimeters. This rifle, according to the weapons team, was generations ahead of current military technology in the small arms field (if this rifle could even be considered "small arms" by this point). It had its own cloaking device that was based off the same technology that made U's new cloaking vest possible and, better yet, was already synchronized with the vest's internal cloaking structure so that whenever U turns invisible while wielding the rifle, the rifle too will turn invisible with her. It shoots an incredible range of small arms calibers, anywhere from simple American .223 cartridge to the excessively heavy 14.5x114mm anti-materiel round used by the Soviets during the war for their PTRS rifles and the American 25x59mm grenade rounds. And in order to make this feat possible, the barrel portion of the C-10 rifle appeared to be some kind of futuristic technology that one would see in that American movie series the _Transformers_ , and when U played around with the weapon before us, the rifle's barrel transformed before our eyes, from a thin, skinny barrel of the .223 to a massive, thick barrel complete with a muzzle brake for the heavier calibers.

The Americans explained that they had incorporated the same technology that they used to build the ship girls into this weapon - Smartsteel, they called it. This elusive building material that made up the body composition of fleet personnel had also been put to use into this weapon, and because of it, the rifle could switch barrels within mere moments at U's will to accommodate any fire mission at hand. Moreover, this rifle is not bolt-action as is customary for many anti-materiel rifles, but semi-automatic. And for standard small arms calibers such as the NATO 5.56 and 7.62, the rifle can even be set on fully automatic, like a traditional assault rifle. It even comes with its whole host of weapon accessories, such as a high-powered military flashlight, a collapsible stock, auto-adjusting hand grips and foregrips, an auto-setting bipod, ballistics measurement computer, and a multi-vision and multi-zoom telescopic sight capable of giving standard, thermal, and infrared options that can also collapse into the rifle's body itself to allow for the use of a built-in red-dot sight for use at closer ranges. This whole slew of accessories, enough to make any gun enthusiast begin to drool, was justified in the sense that U would never have to worry about fiddling with rifle maintenance, for all the parts and accessories that a good sniper would need was already provided in this rifle system alone.

Now is the time I must pull off my most believable American commercial side: but wait! That's not all!

As though all of this were not enough, the Americans and the development team there at the factory took even more steps to further empower this new prototype weapon: they had also made it so that the C-10 rifle can fire concentrated bursts of electromagnetic pulse energy to disable enemy electronics in a certain area. The longer U wishes to build up charge on her shot, the larger the area of effect and the more persistent its effects. And lastly, the rifle possesses an underslung low-frequency targeting device that can broadcast coordinates for air support or nearby friendly artillery listening for its signals.

Much like myself, when the Americans explained all the uses of this new weapon, U seemed very overwhelmed. She thought that being able to claim exclusive ownership to this futuristic-looking combat rifle that seemed like it was taken straight out of a military science fiction book or game was cool enough, so when she was told of all of the rifle's abilities, she just gave everyone an awkward, empty smile that screamed, "Please help, I don't know what to do with my life".

Finally, the tour ended with an hour of U playing around with her new weapon, giving the engineers from H&K some raw data that they could work with to further fine-tune the prototype weapon for deployment to U very soon. I took the Italians, with the new arrival Libeccio, and U back to our home, where Gernot, having come home early to greet our good friend Marco, and the rest of the girls welcomed us for afternoon.

Like U, Lebe and Max were very excited to finally be able to meet another destroyer comrade. So was Prinz Eugen, who would warmly welcome any newcomer anyway, but she gave an extra warm welcome to Libeccio. Libeccio, for her part, was utterly thrilled to be able to meet so many ship girls like herself and was very happy that there were other destroyers like herself. Everyone was happy to meet Littorio, who is a fantastic cook and a beautiful and courteous lady, and Bismarck engaged in her usual hostilities with Roma. My husband and I spent much of the evening catching up with Marco, and today has been a wonderful day, certainly the kind of weekend that Gernot and I desperately needed from the strain of our work over the past week.

But it was inevitable that our conversation this evening would slowly turn to the topic of the ambush attack at the Japanese naval yards of Yokosuka. Marco expressed his deep concerns about this ambush attack, saying that he deeply sympathized with the Japanese, for his own country of Italy could very well be in a similar situation to Japan, the two nations being surrounded by the sea. He asked us if we had taken any steps to bolster our armed forces, but we told him about our efforts, with which he also sympathized. However, he pointed out that public knowledge of these naval attacks committed by these mysterious seafaring alien species, the Abyssals, would soon rise to the point where governments of all major world countries would have no choice but to bolster their defenses against this new global threat. These were terrorists, Marco pointed out, citing the words of the American Seal Team Six operatives when they had spoken to us in the beginning.

"I do not know about you, but I will not allow terrorists to bring harm to my country or my people," Marco declared.

How valiant.

I asked Marco what his thoughts were of a possible connection between the international terrorist group, the A.A.H.W., that Seal Team Six were so keen on going after and the mysterious Abyssals. Marco said that he would not be surprised if future events revealed that there was in fact a connection between them. There were already too many similarities between them anyway, and as he explained his reasoning, I realized that perhaps this was indeed the case. These two groups are too mysterious, too engimatic, and we do not know enough about them; they are both terrorists in some regard; and they have already both demonstrated that they are willing to resort to destructive force to commit their acts of terrorism.

Now that I have been enlightened of these similarities, I rather wish I did not ask Marco this.

Marco is spending the night here before he leaves back for Italy tomorrow. Littorio and Roma and Libeccio will stay with us for perhaps around a week before heading back down to Italy. Before we retired for the night, I found Retia playing around with the Italians in the living room, and they have been teaching her Italian words just so that they can squeal and be amused by Retia's struggling pronunciation. Too cute.


	11. 8-6-2014

**8.6.2014**

At breakfast today, which our friend Marco was able to join us for before his flight back home to Italy, he spoke to me and Gernot privately while the girls were distracted with our daughter trying to speak Italian. Marco revealed to us that after spending some time thinking, he is deciding that he will speak to the rest of his cabinet, the Council of Ministers, about the issue of the Abyssals and hopefully convince them that they are a serious enough terrorist threat to compel the Italian Parliament to take pre-emptive defensive action. He urged us to do the same, and when we lamented to him that we had already been doing so and that our efforts were in vain, he simply told us to try and try again.

"We all are very aware of all the terrorist attacks that have happened over the past decade beginning with the Al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers in America," Marco said, "and we know what human terrorists are capable of. But from what I have deduced, we must assume that these Abyssals, because they are not human, are capable of committing terrorist attacks more destructive than any other we have seen. Either we must endure the hardship of implementing defensive measures where we can against them, or risk the possibility of falling victim to their schemes. If our precautions pay off, would that not make our troubles and efforts worth it?"

Gernot seemed to take particular inspiration from Marco's newfound conviction and promised that he, too, would do more of what he could. It would be a tough road, as we already know, but if Marco is right about one thing, it is that should the Abyssals grow to become a true international threat that they seem to have the potential to become, our precautions would pay off. Or, at the very least, the thoughts would.

After Marco departed for the airport, we were paid a visit by the two members of the American Seal Team Six who accompanied us at the H&K factory yesterday for U's debriefing, Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos. I noticed that when we let them into the house, the girls seemed a bit nervous at their presence, especially when the two Americans treated the girls like fellow comrades and friends. That was when I remembered that even though by technicality they are the true creators of these girls, they have never met before. This was the first time our girls have encountered their true creators face to face. More interestingly, neither Sanford nor Deimos even mentioned to them about their true identities as such, which I noticed and kept in my head as a question to ask them later. Why did they not introduce themselves as the girls' original engineers?

Regardless, their visit was brief, as seems to be the American business mentality, which I do not mind at all. They had two orders of business to talk to us about. The first regarded my earlier call with the head of the British MI-6 counter-intelligence agency, Sir Sinclair. Sanford revealed that Sir Sinclair had contacted Seal Team Six, as they are the rightful creators of our fleet personnel, and had requested that they try to reopen the possibility of a joint British-German fleet exercise program. Deimos asked Gernot and me why we did not accept the offer. If we were so insistent on giving our ship girls the training and combat experience that they so desperately need due to the lack of our own proper naval infrastructure, why was this not an obvious choice? Why were we so bent on flying our girls out to Japan when there was a neighbor literally right next door with the same resources as Japan yet has already stated their willingness to cooperate?

Because I was the one who handled that call, I spoke in lieu of my husband. I explained our sentiment that while it was undeniable that Japan was much harder to make contact with at the moment, we considered their resources to be much more valuable to our ship girls than those of Britain. Not only does Japan have their own entire fleet of ship girls that Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos and the rest of their team have created, but those same Japanese ship girls have actual combat experience against the Abyssals. This battle knowledge was what we wanted the most for our ship girls so that in the event that the Abyssals do become a global threat, our ship girls know how to fight them and defend our country.

But to my dismay, Herr Deimos deconstructed my argument. He had to point out to us that the political atmosphere of Japan at the moment was very anti-foreigner and heavily nationalistic due to the large right-wing majority in the Japanese Diet. This was not like old times, he said, when Germany and Japan were allies. This was a different time now, a time when Japan was rising to reclaim its former military power of its empire days and had no intention of receiving foreign aid to do so (although Herr Deimos did make a sarcastic point about how they, the Americans, had bestowed to them the gift of fleet personnel). He even mentioned that through their spies and secret informants inside Japanese political circles, the more extreme right-wingers in the Diet are now going so far as to bring up the old wartime concept of the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a rather ostentatious title that refers to an Asian sphere of influence that covers all of south, southeast, and east Asia headed by none other than Japan itself. So given this political context, Herr Deimos decisively deduced that entrusting the ship girls to Japan under this climate was folly. He advised us to stop contacting the Japanese for this end, and should we ever receive a call from them asking to discuss terms for such a joint-exercise program like the one we had been trying to request from them, we ought to treat it with suspicion. The Japanese have no infrastructure capable of repairing their own ship girls, unlike us or the British; that is their one critically crippling weakness, is that they have no way to sustain their own fleet of ship girls. While we have teams dedicated to support our fleet personnel, because Seal Team Six had wholly produced the Moebius Four Platoon on their own with only civilian assistance from Japanese doctors and engineers, Japan has no official military or government resources to repair or maintain their own fleet. So if they ever do warm up to the idea of a joint fleet exercise with our ship girls, they may look to take advantage of it by "studying" our ship girls.

When I asked Herr Deimos what he meant by "studying", he said that he was referring to the structural study of German ship girls and learning about the secrets of fleet personnel by reverse-engineering. In other words, he suspected that the Japanese may resort to tricking other nations with ship girls, the only three other countries being us, Britain, and Italy, in order to strengthen their own fleet through various dubious means.

Gernot grimly remarked that Herr Deimos ought to run for office one day once his military days were over, for he talked and thought exactly like a cunning politician. Herr Deimos declined - he said that his way of thinking was more suited for military duties, not politics. Politics was not for him, as much as it might appear to be a shame for us as politicians to refrain from contributing his skills to the field.

"As you may already be aware, Japan is no longer a passive military force. As far as the American government is concerned, Japan will be treated as a neutral, volatile state. I foresee a possibility of a global condemnation of Japan's remilitarization movement if Japan commits to an aggressive armed response to the Abyssals - specifically, if Japan sees it fit to exert their own military presence in the territories and waters of other sovereign nations, then there will be a big problem. We're afraid that the Japanese government will soon take advantage of their claim to national defense and begin a covert operation of controlling and perhaps even eventually annexing foreign territories and waters," Herr Deimos said. He urged us, as the main political leaders of one of the most influential countries of the European Union, to advise other leaders of the EU to keep a close eye on Japan, and also their own borders and territories as well.

The second order of business regarded the rise of the NDP rallies in Germany, which we were surprised they were even aware of in the first place, for that didn't seem like something Seal Team Six would pay attention to, though I suppose this _is_ the best covert operations unit in America we are talking about here. Herr Sanford claimed that the rise in these NDP rallies are in direct correlation with the rise of activities of the Advanced Administration terrorist organization in Europe. He stated that while they could not show any evidence at the moment to prove their suspicions, Herr Sanford cautioned us to take these rallies extremely seriously if we weren't already, because there was a good chance that the NDP was receiving weapons from the Advanced Administration. This took us by surprise, for we had received no such reports of the protesters being armed. All of the rallies were, if anything, in compliance with government laws regarding the free speech and expression, so we could not legally shut down those rallies. But they were by no means violent, although many noise complaints were issued by citizens disturbed by the rallies. The fact that the NDP is being funded by the Advanced Administration, therefore, came across as very disturbing. While our knowledge of the Advanced Administration is limited simply because of the fact that they have not committed any large-scale terrorist attack that would otherwise make their name infamous in the global community, Seal Team Six has given us enough information about them to make us regard them as very dangerous. So to know that they are deliberately trying to stir up trouble in our own country, as it would appear, is unacceptable.

"Then what ought we do?" Gernot asked the two Americans. "Be as it may, without evidence, we cannot convince the Bundestag to outlaw the NDP rallies."

Herr Deimos and Herr Sanford advised us to remain patient for now. They would work closely with local German police forces around the sites of the NDP rallies that have occurred, and they themselves were about to undertake a classified mission in the near future to investigate Advanced Administration activities within Germany. Should their mission prove successful, they should be able to produce sufficient evidence to give us so that we may present it before the Bundestag and put an end to the NDP rallies and perhaps even outlaw the National Democratic Party itself. In the meantime, we ought to reopen negotiations with Sir Sinclair and accept his offer of a joint fleet-personnel exercise program; that was their recommendation. Should we accept, they would have their fellow members in the Seal Team Six unit send over field data drawn from their interactions with the Moebius Four Platoon when they were sent to America for repairs and reconstruction, data that would prove crucial to the training of the ship girls. And with that, they left promptly.

Gernot didn't know what to say after that. Given what we know and what our wishes for our fleet personnel are, it would seem that going against their advice is foolish. Perhaps we ourselves were being driven by the orders of this American team, but throughout all our collaboration and cooperation with them, not once have we felt like they were trying to exploit us in some way, which is strange to say about an American entity. Gernot asked that I re-negotiate terms with Sir Sinclair tomorrow morning and see what we could do for our ship girls, so I agreed, and we informed our girls, including the Italian girls, of our intentions. Gernot then proceeded to call our good friend Marco once he landed back in Rome if he could extend the Italian ship girls' stay here in Germany to participate in a joint-fleet exercise with the British naval personnel, which he allowed for one week.

When Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos left, U asked us who those men were. Imagine the girls' reactions when I informed them that they were two of the people responsible for the creation of all ship girls.


	12. 9-6-2014

**9.6.2014**

I contacted Sir Sinclair this morning at my office in the Reichstag, and I explained to him that we were paid a visit by Herr Deimos and Herr Sanford, the two American operatives from Seal Team Six, and what we had discussed yesterday. So with this context, I informed him that I would be willing to negotiate terms for a joint naval exercise with both the British and German fleet personnel sometime in the future...preferably in the _very_ near future. Thankfully, Sir Sinclair, being the understanding man that he appears to be, accepted my proposal, and we began to discuss the terms. After a few hours, we settled on our final terms.

We will send Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Lebe, Max, U, Libeccio, Littorio, and Roma at Rosyth Dockyard in northern Britain. There, they will join the British fleet personnel, and together, for two weeks, will train under the tutelage of their British counterparts, for they have had much more training and thus know quite a few things about naval warfare that our girls may benefit from learning. As Marco has permitted, Libeccio, Littorio, and Roma will only stay for a week before being flown back to Italy. I would have tried to negotiate for a longer period, and I'm sure Sir Sinclair would not have minded either, but it still stands to fact that these ship girls of ours are, in some respects, a national secret. Simply letting them travel out of the country, even if it is for a good reason like a valuable and much-needed training program, is a risk in itself. Besides, the _Wunderwaffe_ team may have become upset with me had I agreed to a longer term, as much as I do understand their sentiments. Having them out of Germany for extended periods of time - nobody is particularly comfortable with the notion.

Then again, if I am to be of this mentality, I suppose I should have never felt all that comfortable with sending the girls to Japan either. At least we are only sending them across the channel to Britain. I wonder what I should have felt if I were to know that they would fly around the world.

I ran this across my husband, and he gave me his approval, and we officially informed the girls at home earlier this evening after work. Needless to say, the girls were quite happy and thrilled to know that they would finally get their hands on some proper training. Bismarck remarked that she would become a university professor faster than she would become a proper ship girl at this rate, and that particularly amused me and Gernot quite a lot. Roma expressed worries that they would not be able to get along well with the British, given that they were not allies during their own time. Understandable that Roma should be the one who mention this, as it is common knowledge that she and Bismarck tend to bump heads as frequently as Retia pokes me on my cheek whenever I carry her in my arms.

Understandably, Prinz Eugen expressed her concerns about how Gernot and I would be able to look after Retia in their absence. I believe this is a concern that has already been stated in this journal once, if not more than once, that I have become complacent with this new lifestyle with having the _Wunderwaffe_ girls here looking after our daughter while we are at work, like having the world's best babysitters living at home with us for no pay. (Now I realize this wording sounds quite rude, but rude or not, it is essentially true.) Gernot and I will have to rearrange our schedule so that I can return home earlier from work to take care of Retia, or perhaps stay home a few days from work entirely. I even suggested that I could even bring Retia to work with me, an idea that while Gernot said that he was uncomfortable with, it may have to be done. We've grown so accustomed to having the ship girls look after and take care of Retia that no one else can fit the bill. Nobody else takes care of our daughter as well as they do; anyone else would strictly be a straight downgrade. And why would we do that? I suppose we could ask Khal to stop by, since Retia is familiar with and likes Khal, but he is a doctor, and his schedule is strict. Gernot said he'd call him after dinner, which he did, and as we'd thought, Khal could not oblige us.

Regardless, the confirmation of a joint naval exercise program with the British has got most of the ship girls quite excited. Bismarck could not seem to cease her proud soon-to-be exploits and achievements in this upcoming program, a side effect of her unbridled German spirit and ego, and Prinz Eugen, as expected, acted as her cheerleader. Libeccio, Lebe, and Max, the three destroyers, chatted animatedly about what kinds of British destroyers they would get to be friends with, a conversation that strikes me as quite strange, as they should have remembered the British as enemies in their past lives. Roma, as mentioned, entertained thoughts of doubt about this program, and Littorio worried mainly about the kind of food that they would have to sustain themselves on during their time there. Littorio has proven to be quite the connoisseur of fine dining - I should expect no less from an Italian who idolizes the perfection of the ideal cookery of pasta.

After dinner, U asked me for a bit of my time and inquired what her situation would be regarding her prototype weapons. Was she to receive them and train with them during her time in the program at Rosyth Dockyard, or were they too highly classified for her to take with her and train? It was a question I was not able to answer at the moment, so I said I would contact the H&K employees at that factory and the _Wunderwaffe_ staff for advice on the proper classification levels. Should this beg my opinion, I would not allow U to take these pieces of equipment, purely based on the technologies on which U's new equipment is based. A vest that allows U to Cloak? A sniper rifle like that, the C-10? A weapon that fires any kind of modern firearm cartridge and turns invisible with her suit? Just the Cloaking features alone would make them the most classified military hardware in the nation, of any nation. Any Cloaking technology, period, is an extremely potent military advantage - something straight out of military science fiction, made a reality. I told U my thoughts, which made her understandably disappointed, but she said she would make do without them.

* * *

U-511 is a strange girl.

I remember when I first received her from the _Wunderwaffe_ staff. She was a quiet, somber girl. She had the look of an old veteran soldier, like the face of one of the World War II veterans that I visited in my youth during my university days. It was not quite the so-called "thousand yard stare", but it was a face that was thoughtful, in a sort of melancholic manner. The philosopher's face, as I like to call it. The face of one who cannot help but to think about difficult things in life, to deplore and wonder why things must be the way they are. This kind of a face does not belong on a young _Mädchen._ Not on a girl this young.

U also simultaneously combines this kind of facade with the aura of some kind of pet. Perhaps it is only because of the image that she portrays with her submarine cap, the two metal flaps on either side of her head, all interconnected with each other to a small antenna that protrudes up into the air like a car antenna, but she looks like somebody who is suited to being petted like a dog. This is not to say that I think of U as a dog or a mere pet; she is obviously much more than that. But whatever the case, this image chillingly may suit her more than I think - a somber wolf, brought up from the graves of the former wolf packs of the sea, contemplating whether or not it is right and proper for her to return to the world once more to sink and kill.

This is just me putting words in her head; I have no idea if she actually does think about things like this.

But as with the other girls, the months in which I have spent with U have proved otherwise. While quietness, reservedness, and shyness are all core virtues of U, she is not the war-torn veteran that I thought she may have been built to mimic. She has shown no signs of behavior that a traumatized soldier would exude; she is merely the type to prefer spending her free time by a window, looking out at the gardens or napping on the couch with Retia.

What gets to me personally is U's eccentric behavior. Perhaps she is only doing this because of her identity as a submarine, but every day, when I am cooking dinner in our kitchen, I would turn around at least once to cut vegetables or sprinkle spices on the central kitchen counter and spy the top half of U's head staring at whatever it is that I am making. The first time this happened, I was taken by surprise, and I froze, lost for words and not knowing how to react. And as I watched, U slowly sunk back down beneath the kitchen counter out of view and slunk away like a stealthy cat. She would do this every single time I cook, and this is a habit that she still indulges to this day, though I have gotten used to her presence and do not mind her lurking in the kitchen, watching my every move. Perhaps it is that she wishes to learn how to cook, and I even put this across her, saying that Prinz Eugen or Lebe or Max would be quite willing to teach her how to cook if she was too nervous to learn from me, but U only gave me a simple head nod, and I have never seen her cook anything. She just watches me cook, and nobody else. Very strange - harmless, but strange.

Even without that cropped Cloaking jacket that she received the other day at the factory, U is a ghost. It is as though she is a subconscious being, lurking in the shadows like a netherworldian being and disappearing like spirit randomly throughout the day. When we are all sitting together eating or socializing or doing some kind of family activity together, U always seems to be that one girl who disappears and reappears without anyone noticing. And if anyone ever does notice, it is guaranteed that within three minutes, she will suddenly appear by our side again as though she had never gone anywhere. Where she would wander to and why she would wander about, nobody knows. I tried asking her this myself, but U did not give me a reply. She simply shrugged.

Of all the people in the Wedekind household, only our daughter, Retia, seems to be able to understand the enigma that is U. Their interactions are...well, how should I describe this, _interesting_. One vivid example that I recall with perfect memory is one Saturday morning when I was sitting with Retia and U on the couch in the living room. U began to tilt her head to the left at Retia, and Retia responded by tilting her head to the right, mimicking U. U then raised a finger and traced the letter U in the air in front of Retia, and Retia responded by doing the same, but with the letter R. Then U started to clap her hands together softly, and Retia began to slap her own hands together too. That was the extent of their...conversation.

I suppose you cannot expect normality of a girl who is content with being called a letter of the alphabet.


	13. 10-6-2014

**10.6.2014**

Upon entering the Reichstag for another day at work, Gernot and I were immediately greeted by Heidi with urgent news that she had just received moments before we arrived. There had been a shooting at Hanover.

According to witnesses, at 0740 hours, three vans of armed men in full business suits and sunglasses pulled up and stopped in the middle of the intersection of the 441 and 6 streets, blocking all traffic. The men emerged from the vehicles with assault rifles and submachine guns and began shooting everyone they saw in sight. One of them used a megaphone to proclaim that the city of Hanover was now in the hands of the National Democratic Party, and that all who were not in favor of the party's policies were to evacuate from the city or be shot.

The rallies have finally become violent, and it was only a matter of time.

Heidi, the Minister of Defense, had already deployed several squads of the GSG-9 with Oberfeldwebel Jollenbeck in charge to assist local police forces suppressing the armed men. Casualties at the time of our knowledge of this shooting stood at fourteen killed and eight more hospitalized from gunshot wounds. She asked us what we thought was the proper course of action to deal with these terrorists.

Gernot wanted to simply kill the terrorists. "Just as they had exterminated our Jewish citizens, so too shall we exterminate them!" he cried angrily. "We ought to show them what the blood of _true_ rats look like, and now is a perfect opportunity!" And of course, outlaw the NDP while we are at it.

I, however, took a more steadfast approach. No doubt that the terrorists needed to be dealt with seriously, but to simply shoot them all on sight would be folly. We needed a testimony, solid evidence from these terrorists that proved the NDP's direct association with their actions. For all we know, these terrorists could have been random thugs hired by some shady criminal crime syndicate or some other politically affiliated organization that wants to frame the NDP. Because for all their disruptive rhetoric, up until this point, their rallies, besides the noise complaints, were not violent. To the knowledge of the German government, the NDP had shown no such intentions to suddenly turn their rallies violent. Of course, the shooting today did not start as a rally, it was simply a shooting.

But I must admit that the secret information that Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos had slipped us about the A.A.H.W. providing arms to the NDP leaves its bias. Gernot and I both knew that this was most certainly an act of terrorism on the part of the NDP - we just needed the proof, and we knew exactly how to get it.

I ordered Heidi to instruct our special forces to capture a few terrorists if possible and to eliminate the rest. Gernot muttered to me in private that I ought to have instructed the GSG-9 to kill all of them. If there was one American ideal he firmly believed in, it was the refusal to negotiate with terrorists.

Shortly after, as I sat in my office to deal with the flood of calls that were sure to come in regarding the incident, I instead received a call first from Herr Sanford. He informed me that he and Herr Deimos had been notified of the shooting. When I asked him what they were doing now, he replied that he and his partner were headed to a classified location to track down the source of the weapons used in the shooting in Hanover. The GSG-9 would be able to handle the situation by themselves; there was no need for them to assist. He stated that if all went well, by tomorrow, the two American operatives would have solid evidence that we would be able to use to prove the NDP's association with the A.A.H.W. and convict them legally as an extension of a terrorist organization.

Before we ended the call, Herr Sanford also recommended that I put our girls back home on high alert. There could be a chance that their services may be needed, in the slim chance of a grave emergency. I did not like the sound of that, but I did so anyway, calling the girls at home. Citadel Five - one of a series of codes specifically meant to be given to our _Wunderwaffe_ ship girls as orders for war, and this one ordered the girls to prepare themselves to defend the country. We have a few weapons stored carefully in tricky places throughout our home to accommodate the girls, so they do not need to rely on others to be supplied, and we have a bulletproof car in our garage always ready for emergencies like this. They remained on sharp standby for the entire day, but thankfully I did not end up having to deploy them anywhere.

Within hours, the GSG-9 and the local police forces had quelled the terrorist attack, and Jollenbeck and his men were able to capture three of the terrorists, two of whom they had wounded and taken down, the last one surrendering after being cornered. Around the same time, the NDP issued official statements, claiming that they were not responsible. But Gernot and I knew better.

The media arrived just before lunch to press for official comments from the Chancellor. Gernot believes firmly in the ideal that the government must be as transparent as possible with the media for the sake of promoting a positive, trusting image of the government for the citizens of the nation, and to this end he always goes to speak with the media whenever the need arises. Needless to say, the media always knows that the Chancellor is willing to talk, thus are in good terms with him. We announced that the we had been informed of the incident earlier in the morning and immediately dispatched our best teams of special forces to apprehend the terrorists, as was the case, and that we were going to persecute them to the fullest extent of the law and hold them accountable for the deaths of the innocent civilians who had been killed at that street intersection at the outburst of the violence. We issued an official apology for the families of those who were either killed or injured at the epicenter of the incident, and Gernot told me to leave the emergency press conference while he handled the press stuff. He knows I do not like dealing with the press. Sometimes I wonder how it is that my husband has so much patience for such people.

The terrorists captured at Hanover were then taken to Stammheim Maximum Security Prison, so I flew down to Stuttgart to observe their interrogation. Jollenbeck handled the interrogation - it is his trained career specialty, after all. The two wounded terrorists yielded nothing, but the one who had surrendered voluntarily leaked information that NDP authorities indeed had negotiated an arms deal with mediators from the A.A.H.W., although he claimed to know nothing of the details, and that everything he knew was just from casual eavesdropping or rumors from other NDP members. He also revealed that the terrorists at Hanover earlier today were indeed NDP members, meaning that we now can proceed with official charges of terrorism against the party. Armed with the evidence, Jollenbeck and I drove back up to Berlin and worked quickly to prepare the data before an emergency meeting of the Bundestag scheduled for tomorrow morning regarding the terrorist attack at Hanover.

Finally, as a gesture of goodwill from the government, I headed over to the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover to visit the survivors of the attack. One of them died of their wounds at the hospital, bringing the total death count to fifteen, but the others were in stable condition. Three of the seven survivors were still critical; one of them had been shot in through the dead center of his stomach, and had he not been speedily transported to the hospital, he would have perished of internal acid poisoning. Although he is expected to slowly recover, his spine has also been severed at the point where the bullet passed through his body, meaning he cannot walk. A depressing day indeed, especially when I met with the families of some of the survivors who had come to the hospital to check on their loved ones.

Thus ended my day. It was a tiring day, as are all days when we must respond to national crises such as the one today. The girls received me and Gernot warmly when we returned. I wanted to feel relieved and unravel once I had come back home, into the open arms of our daughters. It has become a bad habit of mine, to call the Wunderwaffe girls our daughters. But they have been living with us for enough of a time that I have found myself to be slowly lapsing into this habit. Just the other day, I called out to Prinz Eugen as "meine Tochter" - "my daughter". I suppose this is just indicative of a small quaint streak in me, all things considered, but it may also be an offshoot of a kind of desire to have daughters just like Prinz Eugen and the others. They have made our lives so easy - Gernot and I have been feeling the effects of our aging catch up to us, and we know that as we continue to work, our strength and energy as a young couple is no longer the same as it once was, so having them be a part of our small family admittedly cushions a lot of the stress that we have been feeling lately with our work. Not only do they behave like our own ideal daughters, but they even take care of our real daughter too. What more could we ask of them? And to think that Gernot and I returned home to find a whole warm roast chicken sitting on the kitchen table, ready to eat - and to think that they do all this and ask nothing in return. I suppose that state visit to the cathedral at the end of the month was a good idea - God must be looking over our family.

After dinner, Bismarck asked me if it was possible for me to tell her everything that had happened today. I felt that it was important for someone like Bismarck to know, so I indulged her. After listening to my recollections, Bismarck said that she wanted to set out herself and destroy the NDP, the party responsible for the terrorist attack. She could not comprehend why German citizens would attack fellow German citizens. How did that make sense, she asked. In what situation ever would a German citizen feel that he or she would have anything to gain by attacking and killing another fellow German citizen? She cannot even begin to understand. Such people ought to be branded as traitors and executed, she said, and she would very much like to do some of the honors herself. I restrained her, saying that she would have to leave the honors to the police, the GSG-9, and other German military forces. In addition, tomorrow, we were sure to brand the NDP as a criminal and terrorist organization and outlaw them, rendering their leaders and members criminals in the face of German law. Either way, we were going to destroy them. Bismarck made herself content with this knowledge, although begrudgingly. As arrogant and proud as Bismarck can be, she is fueled by a strong sense of justice. A part of me wishes to ask her what she feels about the fact that she had served the people whose ideologies and beliefs are the foundations on which the terrorists themselves built their organization, but I held back. That was probably not the most appropriate question to ask...


	14. 11-6-2014

**11.6.2014**

Today, in an emergency meeting before the Bundestag, Gernot delivered a brief but powerful speech convincing the government body that the NDP is responsible for the terrorist attack in Hanover and presented the proof in the form of the recorded words of the terrorist captured at Hanover and interrogated by Jollenbeck and his men. When a vote was called, the entire floor, except for the NDP representatives, was in agreement with the banning and disbandment of the National Democratic Party of Germany. Never in my life had I seen such a unanimous vote before...at least, as unanimous as it was ever going to get. Not surprisingly, the NDP representatives stormed out of the Reichstag, accusing all whom they passed on their way out for infringing on their party's right to free speech and expression and claiming that the evidence that my husband had presented before the Bundestag was fabricated and untrue.

Thank God they are gone. Some things do not deserve to be protected, much less by a law.

I spent much of the day working with the rest of the Bundestag to pass a law specifically forbidding the creation or congregation of parties or individuals for extremist parties with known affiliations with former National Socialism or fascism or their ideals and beliefs. In addition, Gernot has ordered all police and military forces in Germany to immediately apprehend, detain, and/or arrest anyone with known connections to the NDP, however big or small, and to keep them in prison until those individuals could be confirmed to be non-threats to the German public.

It appeared that the general populace as also reacted with us in kind. Because Gernot is fairy popular as far as German chancellors go, when his speech was televised at the Reichstag, I received reports from members of our _Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz_ , our agency for domestic intelligence, or the BfV for short, that many towns and cities across the country appear to be taking steps of their own to ensure that the Hanover Massacre, as it is beginning to become known as, does not repeat elsewhere. Local police forces, perhaps because of Gernot's urging, are reported to be making longer, more vigilant patrol. This situation suggests to me that the German people will not tolerate those strange individuals known as Neo-Nazis to hurt other Germans.

But that is still not all. Gernot also used this incident as leverage against the Bundestag's traditional anti-military stance in legislation, and the Bundestag finally gave into his demands of calling for new legislation that would approve of increased military spending. Because of the other pieces of legislation that we spent the majority of today working on passing to outlaw the NDP, we expect that its members and leaders will turn rogue and hostile with a matter of time, and as Gernot stated himself, the sooner this problem could be fixed, the better. Of course, he could not inform the Bundestag of the classified information given to us by Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos, but I think the Bundestag got his message anyway. The new bill has authorized an amount to be allocated to all branches of the German armed forces that is no greater than 37 billion euros, a jump from our usual approximately 31 billion euros, to be divided into monthly deposits. In order to pay for this jump in military spending, we have increased taxes temporarily on alcohol, cigarettes, and gasoline, but these taxes are to remain open and liable to change if the economy begins to take a turn for the worse or if enough people voice their concerns for a reversal of legislation in the near future.

Jollenbeck was especially pleased when he met with me in the evening after all the legislation for the day was completed. An additional six billion euros could mean that his men and the soldiers in the rest of the country's bases could finally become well equipped with the latest equipment that six billion euros could buy, or at the very least much needed upgrades to their current equipment. He remarked to me that he'd been waiting for quite some time to see the military budget spending increased for the soldiers' sake, as it would appear that much of our military spending goes into military intelligence networks, vehicular systems, and underground long-range missile sites, making our standard infantry regrettably neglected.

"We have the money now, and those Nazis don't. What will they buy? Cheap Chinese AK clones?" he said while laughing. I presume that is a military joke he made.

As Gernot and I returned home, I remarked how productive today had been. It is not that the Bundestag is known for indecisiveness or an inability to pass legislation efficiently, but certainly most days of legislation do not go so smoothly and quickly as today. Even just one bill of new legislation usually takes anywhere from a week to a month, perhaps even several months, to pass with heavy compromises and revisions made to it. But not today; almost all our time was spent on drafting the bills, and only a few things were revised during the process. Gernot agreed, although he added with a more sullen, bitter tone that he wished for legislation to always be this way. Even as a seasoned politician, he confessed, there were times when he simply did not want to deal with the long and drawn-out process of passing new legislation. He could be using his time to be doing more productive things than to sit inside the capitol building for eleven hours haggling the terms of a bill with those who opposed it.

Well, don't we all.

We were extremely surprised to find Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos sitting in our living room when we returned home and emerged from our garage. Prinz Eugen hurriedly explained to me that the two Americans had arrived literally three minutes before we did, and there they were, sitting on our couches, in full uniform and gear and their rifles standing up against the tables on their buttstocks. Thankfully, the rifles appeared to be empty, as they sported no magazines loaded in them, and the Americans assured us so too and apologized for their unannounced intrusion. However, Herr Deimos said that their work yesterday and today had discovered something that we, as the leaders of Germany, ought to know. As Max and Lebe brought them some grape juice and sweet pretzels, which they heartily appreciated (apparently, according to Herr Sanford, they had not eaten the entire day but denied our invitation for a full dinner on grounds that they needed to get going again), they began to detail to us their activities.

One of their anonymous sources here in Germany tipped Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos off to an old locksmith's shop in Brunswick, a town to the east of Hanover. The owner of the locksmith's shop himself held no affiliations with the NDP, but some of his customers did, when Sanford and Deimos dug through the locksmith's customer records. They asked the locksmith if those particular customers were frequenting his place of business, and the locksmith said yes and pointed out one of them. One of those customers had been visiting his shop very often, having him fix some locks or make some keys that he hadn't been very clear on what they were about or why they needed fixing. As a businessman, the locksmith didn't say anything or question it and simply did as he was told - he did get paid for his troubles, after all. herr Deimos then asked him if he knew where that customer typically ran off to after giving him those jobs, and the locksmith said he would sit in the small waiting room outside his workshop, and they searched the place. It turned out that there was a loose tile in the floor of the waiting room, and there, the two operatives discovered a secret, large storage pit right underneath the shop that had been dug out fairly recently, judging by the condition of the soil, and contained several empty boxes of ammunition and a crate that held only a single AK-47 assault rifle. One of the boxes held a manufacturer's seal on it still, so the two men traced the small cache to its source. A heavy industries factory in Greifswald had produced them, and this was the same factory that had produced the ammunition and guns that the terrorists at Hanover used for the Hanover Massacre. According to the men, this factory has been known to produce weapons and arms for NDP extremists in disturbances in the past, and that the owner of the factory had managed to evade prosecution by adequately proving that there was not sufficient enough evidence to prove him guilty and revoke his manufacturing license.

How different this time would be.

Herr Sanford assured us that they had already taken care of the threat. Earlier this morning, they stormed the factory building by themselves, apprehended the factory owner in his office in the building, and forced him to give a vocal testimony proving his involvement in the Hanover Massacre by providing the arms used there. This evidence, in the form of a normal USB drive, was given to me and Gernot by Herr Deimos, who told us to use that evidence in however ways we saw fit.

Gernot and I informed the two American operatives that in the end, we did not need their evidence to help us pass a bill to outlaw the NDP, as all the new bills of legislation had been written up and passed or will pass tomorrow, but they told us to hang onto it anyway. It may come in handy in the future, they said, so who knows.

And finally, before they boarded an American helicopter that had landed right outside our house to depart, Herr Sanford informed all of us (including the _Wunderwaffe_ girls) that they had received news from their comrades back in America, their fellow Seal Team Six compatriots, who had released the schematics for another German ship girl, and that they had already relayed this information to the Wunderwaffe team here in Berlin. You can imagine the reactions of the girls who were listening: Lebe and Prinz Eugen begged the two American men to tell them, while Bismarck tried her best to appear aloof but could not resist the temptation anyway. U popped her head out from behind Herr Deimos, leaving everyone stumped as to how she even got there behind him with nobody noticing to begin with. Roma, Littorio, and Libeccio were a little disheartened that the next European ship girl would be yet another German instead of a fellow Italian, which made Max and Lebe feel guilty for them and profusely apologize, while Bismarck instead took the opposite approach and gloated about it to Roma, who nearly punched Bismarck in the face for her mistake.

For their convenience, Herr Deimos revealed the name of the new ship girl currently in construction to us:

Graf Zeppelin.

The reactions that the girls gave to this name made me so curious as to look her up on the Internet, and when I read her entry on Wikipedia, I came to understand why the girls gave that kind of reaction. Graf Zeppelin was an aircraft carrier who was 85% complete and the only German carrier launched by the country before the outbreak of the second war, but because of the shifting priorities of war in the eyes of the Nazis, Graf Zeppelin had never been completed and sat in the Baltic before being scuttled before the Russians could capture her, which they did anyway by raising her up and then sinking her again as a test ship north of Poland.

I do not intend to question the work that they are doing for us, but I cannot help but wonder why Seal Team Six made plans to construct a ship like this as a ship girl. Perhaps from a military standpoint, I can understand why: the _Wunderwaffe_ girls are composed of two destroyers, a submarine, a heavy cruiser, and a battleship; adding a carrier to this roster would indeed make this fleet a much more well-rounded one with the addition of the utilities of an aircraft carrier. But now that I know the story behind Graf Zeppelin...

Is Seal Team Six intending to rewrite history?


	15. 12-6-2014

**12.6.2014**

Khal has paid us a visit again today for another one of Retia's checkups. I returned home a bit early so that I could receive him, with my husband holding business hold back at the Reichstag.

Naturally the topic of the day was the massacre at Hanover. Khal said he heard it on the radio that plays in his medical office in downtown Berlin and expressed his grievances for all who had been affected. This was perhaps the deadliest terrorist attack on German soil since the Munich massacre, and here we were, us politicians, sitting in the Reichstag thinking that some extremist faction of the Middle East, such as ISIS, would make a move first. How wrong we had been. Khal found it morbidly ironic that such a feared attack would instead be committed by fellow German citizens. What had the world come to now, he wondered aloud, that citizens should attack their own fellow citizens in the interest of some abstract ideal or political organization? Foreign terrorists flying into the country to attack native citizens was one thing, but this was another one entirely.

Khal asked me if it was alright for me to disclose information about the massacre, for he had a vested interest in it: one of his more common patients was among the wounded at Hanover, and in fact he had just arrived at our residence after paying that patient of his a visit at the hospital. I asked him first how that patient was doing, and he replied that his patient's status is still critical; the medical staff were unsure whether or not he would pull through, for he was struck by four bullets that pierced both lungs, one of his kidneys, and his liver. Medically speaking, it was highly improbable that he survive his wounds long enough to be shipped to the hospital, but Khal claims to have seen more miraculous medical recoveries.

"All we can do now is pray," Khal said pensively.

Indeed. Ever since the incident, I have been receiving condolence calls from virtually every Prime Minister, President, King, Queen, or Duke throughout the continent, extending their support to the German people affected by it. I was told that there is a #prayforHanover that has hit the top trending hashtags worldwide for the past few days since the massacre by several of my secretaries.

It turned out that the USB drive that was given to us by those two American operatives indeed had a use. Police forensics units in Hanover had successfully traced the source of the bullets and weapons used by the NDP terrorists during the massacre back to the same heavy industries factory that Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos had discovered and notified Heidi that they intended to alert local police authorities and in Greifswald to the location, and Heidi reported to me about it, asking for my advice on what we ought to do, since she felt that I had more authority to decide government action about this. I decided to issue an arrest order on the owner of that factory and a seizure order on the entire factory and the contents it contained, and I deployed Jollenbeck with the USB drive as the evidence to Greifswald to assist. Jollenbeck called me earlier this evening and reported that the owner of the factory had been caught in the middle of trying to desert his factory after clearing it of the machinery and products and did not expect the police to arrive as early as they had. He is now in Greifswald police custody, and we expect him to face charges for his involvement in the massacre.

But justice is only partially served.

All throughout the morning and early afternoon while I worked in my office at the Reichstag, I answered many a call from police and military commanders asking for permission to raid known NDP centers or households that were known to shelter persons of confirmed NDP affiliations or connections. Although it was a risky decision, I decided to authorize all of them. Technically speaking, doing this meant that I was knowingly bending my authority to directly violate some of the constitutional rights that is given to the people. But after quickly consulting with a few trusted members of the Bundestag, we determined that because such police actions were directed against a specific political group with confirmed intentions of destruction and terrorism, and whose members had already demonstrated a capacity for disturbing the peace at their rallies, however nonviolent those rallies may have been, my authorization was ultimately justified. The people too would not object to police forces flushing out NDP members - any decent member of society could agree that the NDP had no place in this country.

But let us shift away from politics...I have been concentrating too much on my job due to recent events and therefore have been neglecting my family. Littorio, our Italian cook, has been teaching Max, Lebe, and Prinz Eugen how to cook pasta. I have myself, on occasion, cooked pasta, but through my friendship with our good friend Marco, I have become uncomfortably aware of how proud Italians can be of their pasta, and how some Italians can raise their noses at any form of pasta that is "incorrectly" prepared. Being knowledgeable in the preparation of German dishes myself, I understand and, to a certain degree, share their insistence on the traditional methods of preparing national cuisines, but never have I known a people who will go so far as to denounce your skill, perhaps even your existence as a cook based on a single dish. Littorio herself appears approachable and forgiving enough, but after seeing for myself how much expertise she has shown in cooking Italian dishes and pasta, which we had for dinner tonight (and it was excellent), I am now hesitant on whether or not I really ought to attempt cooking pasta. Because if I butcher it, I may be at risk of alienating our Italian ship girls. And that is perhaps the last thing I want.

Bismarck, meanwhile, came to speak with me while I spent time with my daughter in the living room. She asked if Graf Zeppelin, the newest _Wunderwaffe_ ship girl to join the ranks, would be constructed in time to join everyone when they depart for England tomorrow night. I answered that I did not know - Gernot and I had learned of her construction at literally the same time as the rest of them. We had no prior knowledge of such fleet personnel. I mentioned that I could try to contact the _Wunderwaffe_ staff to see how far into the construction process they were presently at, and at Bismarck's insistence, I ended up doing so. One of the members of the early night shift replied that they were not certain on the deployment of Graf Zeppelin, that they had been ordered to keep the new German carrier's existence as a ship girl a secret due to direct orders from Seal Team Six. They had meant to inform us earlier this morning, but due to the high volume of phone traffic in my office, they couldn't get a hold of me letting me know of the situation. Guaranteed, however, Graf Zeppelin would finish construction by the end of the weekend, but to finish building her in time to have her join the rest for the joint training program at Rosyth Dockyard would be asking for the best possible outcome for her construction. I relayed this to Bismarck, asking her why she was so interested in Graf Zeppelin.

She answered that in her memory, she had never fought alongside a carrier in combat before. Nazi Germany's navy was never considered too significant, despite the grandiose plans that the Fuhrer had laid down for it before the onset of the war. The fact that those same grandiose plans were reverted and the resources allocated to the Navy diverted to other areas of the military that Hitler had deemed more important for the war effort certainly did much to undermine the strength of the navy, thus in part leading to the unfinished construction of the carrier in question. It was an experience that Bismarck would be honored to have, to be able to fight alongside a carrier - and a fellow German one, no less.

At supper, Khal sat with me at the table - Gernot called to inform us that he expected to come home late, and that we ought to go ahead and have supper without him. As mentioned, dinner consisted of lovely pasta (which type I cannot say, for I am unfamiliar with anything more than a simple preparation of it), delightfully seasoned breadsticks, and an Italian seafood dish that escapes my memory; I'm sure I asked Littorio what its name was, but I cannot seem to remember right now. But no matter; what is important is that it was the most delicious Italian cooking I have tasted. I suppose if I am to sample Italian cuisine, who else better to prepare it than an Italian ship girl like Littorio?

During supper, I noticed that Khal still wears that silver pocketwatch that Gernot gave to him as a birthday present about a month after we had first made his acquaintance. He appears to be wearing it inside his breast pocket, secured by a chain that wraps around his neck like a necklace. Quite a strange way to carry around a pocketwatch, but I suppose it is strange to even carry a pocketwatch on one's person to begin with, in this modern age of smartphones, digital watches, and other tech-savvy gadgets. I asked him why he carried that thing around, and why in such a peculiar manner, too. He answered simply that he felt as though he was one of the few odd people of our time to prefer not to carry around smartphones or be so laden with modern accessories. His own office reflects this trait: his own office at his clinic in downtown Berlin contains no technological gadget other than a telephone. No computer, no smartphones or cellphones, no television, nothing. His staff in the lobby do have computers to work with, of course, and the waiting room does have a quite a large flatscreen TV for the guests, but Khal never uses these for himself. For him, a pocketwatch was the perfect accessory for him; it was one of the few things he could wear on his person that would not intrude on his own subconscious code of conduct. Not that he has anything against technological gadgets; he simply prefers to remain old-fashioned in a world that is ever changing by technology.

It appears that my daughter Retia has developed quite the close relationship with Littorio as well...in a more _personal_ way. After dinner, once we had seen Khal off and gathered in the living room to play a few card games while Prinz Eugen and Lebe brought us all cookies and juice, Retia patted Littorio's left breast and stared up at the Italian ship girl. Quickly this scene became the center of attention, as Retia kept insisting quite adorably on feeding from Littorio, much at the Italian battleship's chagrin. We still are not certain why Retia kept trying to demand milk from Littorio's breasts, but I have a smoldering suspicion that my daughter may have been behaving this way because Littorio's chest is more...how should I say, _open_ for invitation.

Honestly, I have no clue either. I just made that one up myself.

Littorio was deathly afraid that I would taken offense to this little incident, for I might view her with envy that my own baby would desire the milk of another woman other than her own mother, so she kept profusely apologizing to me, making me feel as though I was starring in one of those Korean dramas. I was laughing by that point and gave Littorio my permission to breastfeed Retia if she so chose, but the peer pressure from everybody else compelled her to actually do it. Now I feel quite bad for Littorio for putting her in that situation, but Retia herself seemed satisfied.

Now I sit here typing at my laptop wondering whose milk Retia finds more satisfying. Hmm, my motherly instincts are tingling...!


	16. 13-6-2014

**13.6.2014**

We woke up early today to see our _Wunderwaffe_ girls depart for England. Jollenbeck arrived to pick them up from our home in his military armored truck, one of the ones that resemble those armored trucks that carrier companies employ for civilian safekeeping and transportation of civilian valuables, something of that nature, so that civilians will not raise alarms about a suspicious military vehicle with mounted machine guns driving down the highway first thing in the morning when I went to work. Gernot, Retia, and I all bid them _abschied_ , and Prinz Eugen and Lebe bid us a tearful reply as well. Bismarck, true to her nature, saluted us as she would do for a proper Admiral and thanked us deeply for our hospitality for them thus far, and that all them, especially herself, would work and train as hard as they could to make us proud. Not only us, but their fellow countrymen and country proud as well. For a joint training program that was only to last a mere two weeks, they sure took it quite seriously. As they ought to; this will be their first real sea-going experience, which they quite literally have had none of thus far since their construction. Max saluted us as well, and U, as expected, attempted to shake Retia's tiny hand by grasping it in between her thumb and fingers, but instead Retia gave her a smack on the forehead. U did not know what to make of this.

The Italian ship girls also bade us an emotional farewell as well, as they will return straight to Italy following a week of training at Rosyth Dockyards. Littorio professed that their time here was to be an unforgettable experience, living with other ship girls of a different nationality and thus learning what it must be like eating German cuisine and learning a bit of German themselves. Of course, this cultural exchange was mutual, for Libeccio had been teaching Max, Lebe, and U a few words of Italian (and had much dissonant fun in doing so when their attempted pronunciation of Italian quickly got out of hand). It is quite fortunate that everyone in our household happens to know and speak English fluently; both Gernot and I took our English studies quite seriously in grade school while growing up and perfected it in university, and the _Wunderwaffe_ girls appear to be constructed with English preprogrammed in. Same goes for the Italians, I had deduced.

As though to mock Littorio, Retia waved at the Italian battleship and giggled loudly, causing Littorio's face to flush quite noticeably. Unable to help myself, I added to her extreme chagrin even further by adding that someday, I wished for her to have a daughter just as wonderful as Retia, and immediately Libeccio and Roma began to poke fun at Littorio in regards to this. I hope I did not make her too embarrassed.

Before departing, Jollenbeck gave me a special USB adapter that apparently has been specially crafted by the staff over at the _Wunderwaffe_ labs, and he said that upon stopping by, the boys there wanted him to deliver this adapter to me. He also gave another one that looks identical to the one I received from him to Bismarck. He briefly explained that these adapters were special two-way communicators that used satellite broadband to allow us to communicate with the girls while they were in England in the midst of their training period. These communicators would operate on a very secret frequency and would be protected by the best online security measures currently available, meaning that every evening, the girls could call me on my laptop and vice versa if we ever needed to speak to one another. Had the team in the labs had more time, they would have also taken the extra step to convert these adapters into earpieces so that we could instantly communicate with one another at any time, a prospect that may come in handy in the future. But for now, we shall settle for this. Bismarck promised us that she and the rest of the girls would contact us regularly to report on their activities, despite our insistence that they ought to simply try to concentrate all their efforts in training and not always have to worry about us.

"But - but now that we will not be here for the next two weeks, who will take care of Retia?!" Lebe cried out. Laughing, I informed her that I myself would. I am her mother, after all. There was no reason to fear their brief absence. We weren't going to die simply because they were not here.

After they departed for one of the airfields outside of Berlin to be airlifted to England, I decided to take my daughter Retia with us to work. Although technically Bundestag members are not allowed to bring children to work, exceptions can be and are made, especially those of us who happen to have babies or toddlers, and so long as we can keep them under control, no one will cry foul. Besides, it is not as if people abuse this leniency, and when I arrived at work, several secretaries and colleagues were quite delighted to see my baby. Gernot remarked that perhaps we ought to bring Retia to work with us more often so that he could stroke his ego of being a proud father of a beautiful baby daughter some more. I told him to keep dreaming; politicians never make good parents. It is an inside joke between us, and we both laughed.

As it turned out, nothing else of significance happened today. Good news only, if you could even call it as such. Reports of local German police authorities and our special forces successfully rounding up known NDP members and associates for interrogation, but none so far have coughed up any more critical evidence. Despite this, the fact that we are shutting much of their manpower up in jail for a brief period of time means that the party - no, we have outlawed them as a political party, so _organization_ \- will be crippled if they attempt to launch more terrorist attacks with German manpower. By no means is this the end of the push to exterminate the NDP, but we are making good progress. I am rather curious to what that American team is doing right now or what they are up to, but I suppose they are working on important things. Although they certainly seem quite secretive and elusive, the results of their endeavors so far have been satisfactory and unselfish, so I suppose it will not hurt to trust them a little bit more.

* * *

Since I do not have anything else to write and I am still in the mood to write some more, I shall talk about my thoughts of Lebe. I spent some time in my earlier entries discussing Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, and U, so in order to be fair to everyone, I suppose I shall continue this trend of mine.

Her full name is Z-1 Leberecht Maass. When I first received her along with Max, I had been quite fooled - I believed them to be _junge..._ boys, not girls. Perhaps you can imagine my great surprise when I turned to the scientists in the _Wunderwaffe_ laboratories where Gernot and I had visited to meet them. The scientist who introduced me to them at the time, whose name was Dr. Schweitzer, immediately recognized that look of ambiguous confusion on my face and assured me that they indeed were female and not simply young boys crossdressing as girls. One of the younger scientists who overheard our conversation had been bold enough to suggest that they ought to _check_ the girls in the name of science. Naturally, both Lebe and Max slapped him at the same time.

Besides her rather androgynous appearance, Lebe is otherwise quite your ordinary young German teenager...although, looking at the current state of German teenage youth these days, I hesitate to use the term "ordinary" to describe her in the first place. She is _very_ feminine in her tastes and outlook, though not so to the point of annoyance. It is a pleasant feminism, more than enough to clearly establish her as a girl to those (such as myself, I admit) who may not initially think her as so at first. In fact, Lebe is the ship girl with whom I identity the most, for I once was the girl she is now when I was a _junges mädchen..._ how many years ago was this now, thirty? She reminds me of what I may have grown up to be had I not taken a keen interest in politics and learned to put away some of the more feminine traits of mine in order to suit myself more comfortably into a career of lawmaking and statesmanship.

Lebe's main interest, surprisingly, is knitting. Lebe _loves_ knitting. She absolutely adores it. Even more so because most of the time she has spent knitting, she usually spends it knitting something for Retia. Small scarves, mittens, sweaters, even...although they would be more useful during the winter. But I will not complain - the first few that Lebe knitted, naturally, were not very good, as she was only beginning to train herself. I did find her in our small library reading a book with Bismarck about knitting, and curious as to why she was reading such a book, I asked about. Lebe said that knitting looked like it would be a lot of fun, but she did not know very much about it, so she was trying to learn. She asked if I happened to know how to knit, which I professed I did but only to a small extent. As in, I understood the basics and could knit something simple, but due to years - decades, even - of lack of practice and a general lack of in-depth knowledge, I could not teach her anything beyond that. Lebe didn't care, and she implored me to teach her such basics. If she learned the basics, then she could then take it from there. She simply needed somewhere to get started. And so I did, for exactly three hours, and Lebe, true to her word, learned the rest by herself.

It amazes me to know that these ship girls are so incredibly sharp...perhaps several times sharper than humans like me. We always hear about stories of young prodigies or geniuses, always managing to pull off incredible feats of learning different skills. But how many of them does one meet in his or her life? Perhaps we all know that certain someone who is quite intelligent, smart, or clever. Now that I sit back and dwell on this subject, I must realize that I have been living the past few months in the company of not one, but _five_ such geniuses. It also frightens me to know that there now exists technology to _construct_ androids who appear and behave identically to normal humans...but whenever I look up on Lebe's face, or anyone else's face for that matter, and see her bright smile as she indulges in her enjoyment of knitting or cooking or whatever else it may be that allows her to experience joy and happiness, that fear simply...melts away. The concept of such ominous technology, called out by popular media such as movies that bemoan the advancement of controversial technology, may indeed be questionable, but perhaps if this technology is responsibly cultivated and utilized, humanity as a whole can benefit from the companionship of such girls like Lebe.

Lebe also seems especially fond of cats. Bismarck is too, but Lebe stands out because she not only holds an affinity for them but also possesses some kind of supernatural understanding with them, as though she is the Cat Whisperer. Oftentimes when I return home from work, I would find Lebe surrounded by a group of cats numbering anywhere from just one to twenty-five...even though we own no such pets. Lebe explained to me that they would always follow her home whenever she took walks to buy groceries from the local supermarket, and the cats would simply follow her home. She even recounted this one time when she had an entire conga line of cats following her down the street, drawing the curious attention of many an amused onlooker as she came home.

"I didn't ask for this power!" Lebe cried when Max asked her when the former was going to adopt a few of them for Bismarck's sake. Bismarck, incidentally, loves black cats...although they do not seem to like her back.


	17. 14-6-2014

**14.6.2014**

Strange news today.

Heidi, who has been overseeing government military forces participating in the arrests and detainment of confirmed NDP affiliates and individuals, reported to me this morning as I was feeding Retia that our forces had come across two odd discoveries that both have very worrying implications.

The first discovery at first sounds strange - it was that our troops have discovered nothing. What I mean by this is that this morning, several squads of the Stadtallendorf stormed a few houses in the outskirts of Dresden in order to arrest a few notable NDP chapter leaders in the area, but they were nowhere to be found. Now, granted, our military endeavors to uproot NDP leaders and shut down their various chapters throughout the country following the Hanover Massacre may very well have been found out by NDP-affiliated individuals who may have seen some of their comrades get arrested and thus warned the rest of their comrades so that they may flee the country, but if that is the case, our border troops are keeping a strict eye on all of our airports and borders to make sure nobody with known NDP ties leaves the country. Obviously it is impossible to ensure that _all_ NDP members stay inside the country, but if we can imprison their leaders, the competent thinkers that are capable of leading a movement, then surely the party itself will be dealt a heavy blow. It is the brutal truth that not everyone is born to be a leader, a truth that we can exploit to our hearts' content.

But the troops in Dresden discovered that the homes of the men and women they were hunting to arrest were entirely untouched, while their targets seemingly vanished off the face of the planet. When the troops interviewed their neighbors, they claimed that following the Hanover Massacre, they had noticed that the targets were not seen again. One such neighbor apparently bitterly remarked that it was best for those people to run - if the government was not actively hunting them down, the people themselves would.

Not just in Dresden, but throughout the day, Heidi and I constantly received reports from our troops and local police forces around the country revealing negative results. So far, their efforts in rounding up known NDP officials and leaders was going so well - and today, all of it just came to a grinding halt. Dare I say, they seemed to be _spirited away_...though I doubt such a term is appropriate.

Of course, they could have simply all gone into hiding. _But all at the same time?_ That sounds too strange to be true.

I called my husband and Jollenbeck to my office to discuss this with Heidi in private. Why were the NDP suddenly disappearing like this? Their homes showed virtually no signs of struggle if there was someone besides our forces actively trying to hunt them down themselves. Perhaps they were assaulted whilst they were outside their homes? But seeing how many more our forces still needed to arrest, if there is another entity hunting them down, it is not foolish to think that we would have received a report about at least one such kidnapping - someone would have seen at least one of them, surely. Gernot remarked that this situation was certainly quite strange. "Did Batman decide to come punish those Nazis for us?" he even joked.

Batman or not, while it warms my heart to know that there is perhaps another faction out there that is hunting down the NDP, it still stands that this is a governmental responsibility, and that we cannot outsource it to a private entity. In addition, the more NDP they kidnap, the less NDP we have in our own prisons to use as information pools through interrogations. Not to mention, who knows if this Batman-like faction is even friendly towards us, the government, or to the citizens of our country as a whole, or whether or not this faction even exists in the first place. We could very well be overthinking this, something all four of us were keenly aware of once our little private meeting was concluded. I ordered Jollenbeck and Heidi to call upon the BfV, our domestic counterintelligence agency, to crack this mystery. Hopefully the good men and women of the BfV can figure out what exactly is going on here.

Before Gernot left, I held him behind in my office for a quick word. I asked him if this matter was a significant enough issue to consider speaking to the American Seal Team Six about. After all, although the times in which we have requested assistance from them have only been a few, they had given us aid with speed and decisive aggression, and they did not seem interested in calling in favors either. Gernot disagreed. While the operatives over at Seal Team Six were certainly good people, we could not rely upon them exclusively. Not only would we start to use them as a sort of crutch (not to mention they are still a foreign military unit who is under American jurisdiction, not ours), but we would also be encumbering them unnecessarily. A top secret team like them would undoubtedly be busy with tasks and assignments all around the world - it would be best if we did not push our luck with them. Hearing this from my husband is actually rather surprising - normally Gernot speaks of the Americans in a dismissive tone, seeing how much involvement the United States government has had in Europe, especially our own country, over the past decades. Gernot explained that Seal Team Six was an exception - while they may be American, as individuals, they did not seem like the manipulative, power-hungry American politicians that would normally fit the bill.

After work, our colleagues in the Bundestag assured us that they would handle the rest of the evening work, enabling my husband and I to return home early today with our daughter. Retia seems to have figured out somehow that the _Wunderwaffe_ girls had departed for an extended period of time, now that they have been absent for two nights, for she has crying out some of their names with her unsteady baby voice. Although this should normally be an adorable sight, it instead rather pains me, because I know that my daughter has forged some strong friendships with the ship girls. Lebe and Max always fed her and played with her, Prinz Eugen fed her, played with her, _and_ acted as her nanny, even sometimes when I was at home too, and U liked to crawl around on the floor with Retia riding on her back. Typical U things. Bismarck was the most aloof from Retia, but even she would look after her when nobody else could by reading to her books by Kant and Kafka in our library.

Thankfully, tonight was the first night in which we were able to test the communication adapters that Jollenbeck gave to us, courtesy of the _Wunderwaffe_ team. The ship girls had all reached England safely and were inhabiting a secret underground bunker a kilometer outside of the dockyard grounds as their living quarters. They had been introduced to the British ship girls, who are apparently nicknamed the "Royal Girls" (is it just me, or does that sound like it has a rather... _suggestive_ connotation? It might just be me). Bismarck was fuming at the fact that there are also apparently so many more British ship girls than there are German ones. If I were Bismarck, I would perhaps feel the same way too.

Bismarck also informed me that our German carrier, Graf Zeppelin, had also arrived there a few hours after they had landed. I suppose I should pay a visit to the _Wunderwaffe_ team tomorrow and give them a stern word about making sure to inform me of such things when they happen, they have been slacking off quite badly in this regard and I have not yet had the opportunity to reprimand them. In any case, it is nice to hear that our newly constructed carrier has now joined them in England and will be participating in the joint training program there. I asked Bismarck of her feelings training alongside British ship girls. I cannot lie - that was initially one of my bigger personal concerns regarding this training program from the start. Bismarck is, as I have mentioned, a very proud German woman with the military spirit of World War II Germany burning within her. Obviously during that time the British were her enemy, so I asked her if she still felt any animosity towards them that may hinder her ability to cooperate with them for the sake of receiving the training that they needed.

After making sure none of the other ship girls were listening to her, Bismarck secretly confided to me that indeed, it was a concern that also rode on her mind as well. When they met the Royal Girls for the first time today at Rosyth Dockyards, she felt a real sense of war rivalry that, if agitated enough, could very well become resentment or even hatred. It was a clear dichotomy between her heart and her mind: while there is no more war between our two countries and we are now close allies, Bismarck seems unable to completely shake off the shadow that adheres to her feet. She is aware of just how important this upcoming training regime is and how seriously she must take it, but one hostile confrontation with the Royal Girls and who knows what may happen. I assured her that so long as she could keep her hubris in check, she should be fine. I asked what of the others, and Bismarck reported that no one else seemed to have the same internal conflict, which is good to hear. I advised Bismarck to always talk to the others, especially Prinz Eugen, whenever she felt her old war hostilities bubbling up. Prinz Eugen would know how to calm Bismarck down.

With that, I sat Retia on my lap so that my laptop camera could see her, and I asked Bismarck to fetch the rest so that Retia could say hello. My daughter was certainly thrilled to see them on the computer screen, but since she is still rather unfamiliar with the marvels of technology, Retia reached forward to touch the screen with her tiny baby hand, perhaps thinking that the girls were actually _inside_ the screen. The girls, quickly realizing what Retia was doing, also laughed too, finding this very cute. Retia starting pouting up at me, looking at me with a very confused face that seemed to be asking me why her best friends were inside this thin piece of metal. I just cuddled her up with me. How am I supposed to answer that? I simply told her that they were away on a trip and would be back in two weeks.

I can hear Gernot finishing his shower in our master bathroom. I have already prepared myself for bed, since my husband and I will be going to bed together for the first time in a very long time. It has been so long since we have done so that I actually find myself rather looking forward to it. It makes me feel like a normal couple with my husband, as much of a "normal" life that we could have led with our beautiful baby daughter without an obstructive career in politics to hinder us. I know a few of my colleagues who are very strict on their own children, having visited their homes in the past and meeting them and seeing their interactions. I myself prefer intending my daughter to live the productive life that she wishes to lead, but if possible, I certainly do not want her pursuing a career in politics if she plans to marry and raise a family at all. Gender stigmas still weigh heavily on my shoulders, for I feel that it is my responsibility to raise my baby into a healthy, productive young lady. I am a _mother_...of course this is my task. But my career demands too much of my time - I must always choose between the needs of my country and the needs of my child. And almost always, the needs of my country win out.

I wish that one day, the contrary might for once be true.


	18. 15-6-2014

**15.6.2014**

My husband suggested that I stay home today, as today is Sunday, and take a day off to care for Retia. He would handle matters in my stead while I stayed home. At first I opposed - there had not been anything wrong with bringing our baby daughter with us to work. I kept out of the way for the most part, unless I had to attend an important meeting, staying in my office with Retia, working on reports or answering calls while playing with my daughter. No, he said, today I ought to simply stay home for today. He himself would not be away for long, so he told me not to worry.

So, being the good wife that I aspire to be, I relented. However, I did make him stay an extra half an hour while I made some lunch for him to take with him to work - some grilled cheese and ham sandwiches - and made him promised that he would return home no later than 16:00 in the afternoon. He tried to claim that I was making unreasonable demands, but he dropped his act when it was clear I was not trying to joke around.

As I watched him drive out, I did think about my husband's thoughts about me bringing Retia with us to work. At first Gernot had opposed the whole matter, but he could not otherwise sway a mother's wish. He has not explicitly stated his reasons for his opposition, but I do believe that they stem from basic adult fears, that something may happen to our baby girl. We may get into a car crash while going to work (car crashes are very rare, though), and my husband and I may become injured, even killed, and leave Retia with no parents, either temporarily or permanently. Or, even worse, Retia herself might become injured or even killed. The Reichstag itself might get attacked in a terrorist strike, like the one at Hanover, and something may happen to Retia. Assassins might make an attempt on Retia's life or our lives if we bring her to work with us on the wrong day at the wrong time. Anything out of a whole infinitesimal plethora of causes may hurt my beloved Retia, our beloved Retia. It is our duty, both Gernot's and mine, to protect our daughter. That is what parents do. It is what any parent who cares about his or her child at all would do.

Thankfully, we have yet to encounter such a situation or an event, and I would very much so prefer to keep it so.

So today being Sunday, I spent the day relaxing with Retia, playing with her and reading some of the books that I have in the library that I still need to finish from my weekend nighttime readings while she napped. I called Heidi and invited her over for some afternoon tea and some bratwurst I was cooking for an evening snack for the family. The weather was very nice, and the sunshine poured into the house very well. There is something so...calming and majestic about reading a book on a nice, sunny day, so I opened up the windows and let the summer breeze flow in as I read _Doctor Faustus._

After finishing the book, I decided to watch some TV. Normally I never have much time to watch television, as my work consumes most of my time, and given my role in the Bundestag, I usually receive information before most of the rest of the populace does, anyway, so watching the news is rather pointless for me. Usually, whenever we do use the television for anything, it is for movie nights with the girls. But today was different. I was flipping through the channels for something interesting to watch, perhaps a documentary or something of the like, when I passed over the news presenting a feature story that caught my eye. It was about a relative of one of the perpetrators of the Hanover Massacre, and she talked about how nobody knew that he even was part of the NDP. He was, in almost every conceivable way, non-NDP - his beliefs and actions all throughout his life always suggested that he was a good person and did not condone anything that constituted the NDP's own beliefs and actions, yet suddenly he now lies dead in his grave near his home, his name tarnished as an evil terrorist who had done terrible things against his own countrymen for seemingly arbitrarily extremist values. He never seemed like one to join a party like the NDP, so why so suddenly? It was only up until very recently, just before the massacre, that the said terrorist was, well, not a terrorist, and then all of a sudden, the massacre happens, and the GSG-9 shoots him dead.

This rang alarm bells in my head, and I immediately phoned Jollenbeck. I told him about the news report I saw on television just then, and I asked him if the interrogations he conducted showed signs of possible mind-control, as far-fetched as that may sound. Jollenbeck did mention that indeed, the man they captured from the Hanover Massacre did appear to behave and speak fanatically at first before they broke him in for information, and he and his fellow interrogators did take possible brainwashing and other such manipulative methods into account. Certainly their man did not seem like the normal, average, healthy German citizen. It had been clear that something had been done to him, but the effects of such treatment were not profound enough to the point where it was an obvious threat or enough to impair his cognitive thinking and logical reasoning.

I then phoned Heidi one more time while keeping Jollenbeck still on the line. I ordered her to head down to the BfV department and request that they map out the areas of residence of the terrorists involved in the Hanover Massacre. After that, they would have the authority to order several units of the local police forces in the area to interview the neighbors and the relatives of the terrorists, just like yesterday. I want to know if the man that Jollenbeck's men interrogated is but one of many like him who may have become brainwashed by the NDP to carry out their plans. Because if such is the case, then we have yet another problem on our hands.

I relayed to Jollenbeck the orders I had given to Heidi. I ordered Jollenbeck to monitor all kidnapping reports throughout the country within the past month and see if any of them matched up with our terrorists. Maybe the man that was interrogated may not have been kidnapped, but perhaps there are others who were. Is the reason why the NDP had been growing in strength and numbers until this time because of _brainwashing_ or _mind control?_ It sounds ridiculous, and normally I would not believe this to be true. But after living with humanoid robots called "ship girls" for a month, there may be truths to this world that are yet beyond the grasp of the public world sense of reality. If there exists technology to revive old warships and place their souls in the bodies of young teenage girls who are much stronger than the average human being, then surely it is not out of the realm of possibility that there exists technology to do other wondrous things as well.

Perhaps I did end up working just as much as I would have in my office. A good politician's work never ends...is what I'd like to tell myself. God only knows if I have yet to reach that threshold.

At 14:00, Heidi arrived with her own baby daughter, who is incidentally the same age as Retia at one year old. We enjoyed some simple Teekanne green tea, as I had no time to actually prepare proper tea because I had just gotten off the phone with my husband, informing him of my actions at home. Heidi reported that the BfV was hard at work trying to discover the reasons behind the NDP personnel's disappearances, and that they would tackle this case as well. I asked her about the plausibility and the feasibility of perhaps raising the salaries of the men and women of the BfV department, and Heidi replied that such raises should depend on the outcome of their research. And she also mentioned that on the topic of raising salaries, I ought to raise hers so that she could afford that new Bentayaga SUV she and her husband have been setting their eyes on perhaps purchasing or at least leasing. Needless to say, we both laughed.

Since this is the first time our daughters have met, we paid lots of attention to them as we introduced them to one another. Retia seemed to be intrigued by the sight of someone just like herself and toddled over to her, and Ermi seemed surprised to see that someone like _herself_ was already able to walk. So Retia plopped down beside her and started poking Ermi on her arm, as though trying to elicit a reaction of some sort. Ermi did not know how to react to this, so she simply began to cry, not knowing what else to do. Heidi and I both giggled.

Heidi and Ermi returned home just as Gernot returned home - in fact, Gernot arrived just in time to bid Heidi and her baby girl goodbye. Gernot asked me how Retia received baby Ermi, and I told him of their interactions, which made my husband laugh too. He said that our baby girls would grow up to be good friends. I do not know whether he was being sarcastic or not, but here is to hoping that they do in fact grow up to become best friends.

This time tonight, I received a call on my laptop from Bismarck. Her voice was quite strained and showed signs of hard labor, and Bismarck reported that this training program was extremely tough. Had she not been built a battleship, she, too, would have ended up dead exhausted just like the others. Lebe, Max, Prinz Eugen, U, and Libeccio were all already dead asleep by this time, and Bismarck herself professed that she herself was quite close to passing out on her own bed after her nightly report. The training regimen had demonstrated all too painfully clearly that their lack of consistent training had made them all grow quite soft, and compared to the Royal Girls, they looked pathetic, and Bismarck even mentioned that her pride was bruised today. But she was determined to train to become just as good as the rest of the English ship girls.

Not wanting to keep Bismarck in the dark, I informed her of the recent developments in the country, about how NDP personnel were disappearing without a trace, and about the possibility that NDP personnel may have been brainwashed into committing evil deeds such as the terrorist attack in Hanover. I asked Bismarck to relay this information to the others so that they, too, would know what was going on in Germany by the time they returned in two weeks' time. Bismarck agreed and asked me to stay safe, especially Retia. This was a new an uncertain time, she said, and unlike ship girls like herself, if something happened to us, we could not expect to be so resilient.

Before ending the call, Bismarck did pine about how she already missed the comforts of our home. She mourned that she had allowed herself to grow so accustomed to the comforts of our lovely home that it was hard for her to truly let go of all the habits and tendencies and expectations she held while living here with us. This drew some chuckles out of us, but I ensured Bismarck that everything would be just the same as she'd left it when she and the rest come back home. And of course, Retia would be there to greet them when they do.

Speaking of my daughter, I can hear Retia rolling around on the covers of our bed. She has been doing this quite often recently - I think it is because she saw Prinz Eugen and Lebe do so one of the nights before they departed for England and wants to mimic them. Or she actually derives some kind of small joy out of rolling around on soft bedsheets.


	19. 16-6-2014

**16.6.2014**

This morning, Commander Kaspar Manstein, the head of the BfV, requested my audience with Heidi to report their findings. Deeming this meeting important, I phoned my husband in his separate office of the matter, and we made our way over to the BfV department after lunch with Jollenbeck, who had stopped by to drop off a supplementary report to the BfV, so we invited him to attend the meeting with us, as we felt that Jollenbeck would benefit well from learning of the BfV's findings.

Commander Manstein reported that overall, they could not isolate the culprit behind the disappearings of the NDP personnel that our local police forces had been attempting to arrest. All the evidence that they had discovered was inconclusive - the BfV's interviews with the neighbors, family, associates, and acquaintances of known NDP personnel who had yet to be arrested but had disappeared instead could deduce nothing that pointed to any one potentially responsible party, so in this regard, we have no leads.

However, according to many of the interviewees with whom the BfV had spoken, roughly 48%, Manstein stated that the disappeared NDP members had all received a mysterious phone call, a mysterious email, a mysterious letter, or mysterious text message shortly before their disappearance. Almost all of these interviewees had reported that the contents of such mysterious communiques were ominous, to say the least. Those who had received phone calls or voice mail had heard a robotic or synthetic voice telling them that they would become part of the _"Nacht der Untoten"..._ the "Night of the Undead", whatever this means. The written mediums also delivered the same message, preserving this subtle phrase of " _Nacht der Untoten"._ Also very interesting (or chilling, depending on your perspective) is that each disappeared NDP member that the BfV investigated appeared to have received this message in a customized manner that suited them. For example, one such suspect was a known journalist for a small but well-circulated extremist political magazine in Southern Germany, and she received her message in the form of a typed email with no return address. Another suspect wrote small novels as a side hobby, from what the BfV was told, and somehow the deliverer of these messages knew this and delivered a hand-written note in very neat handwriting, envelope, and even stamp, which was completely unnecessary since there was no return address on the envelope either and thus had to be delivered by hand. (No one in that suspect's neighborhood had seen anything near that man's house during the days leading up to his disappearance.)

And all messages were signed, "The Sheriff".

I thought we were reviewing the synopsis for a scary movie at first.

Clearly, all of us agreed that whoever the culprit was behind the disappearings of our wanted NDP personnel, this culprit knew these people, whether or not the NDP members knew the culprit back. This culprit was powerful enough to make them disappear entirely off the face of the Earth, as it seems, simply by knowing them. I asked Manstein if he and his men had already tried searching for this "Sheriff" individual whose name kept getting mentioned in the signatures of these letters, emails, what have you, and he replied that they already had but found nothing.

"Whoever he is, he was at least gracious enough to have left us with a name," he chuckled. I suppose the rest of us were inclined to agree.

The other crucial finding in these reports from the BfV was that there were many NDP members who were most likely not true members of the party at all. Manstein reported sadly that upon speaking with the family and friends of many NDP party members who had already been arrested and detained, his men discovered that there had been more than sufficient evidence to suggest that many NDP members were never the kind to join the party at all in the first place. In fact, many of them had joined extremely recently - some as late as _hours_ before the Hanover Massacre. Several NDP members' families had been shocked and saddened to learn that their loved ones were being imprisoned for being a part of the NDP when they themselves had no idea about their loved ones' affiliation with the party.

"We can safely assume that something is going on in this country that is turning some of the youth into mindless supporters of the party," Manstein concluded.

Statistics showed that the vast majority of the NDP's recent recruits and a corresponding percentage of those imprisoned and disappeared were young adults from the ages of sixteen to twenty-eight. There were a few outliers, such as a few middle-aged individuals and even an elderly senior who had joined the party back in February, but for the most part, young adults were affected. The most curious statistic of all, however, was that a large plurality of these NDP personnel lived in northern Germany, along the coast, although the rest were relatively evenly spread out throughout the country.

Jollenbeck, being the action-oriented sergeant that he is, offered to lead his men in the GSG-9 in a search for this man or woman named "Sheriff'. He said that he knew a few prominent police detectives and would get into contact with them to see if they could pinpoint the identity of this "Sheriff" person or otherwise gather some kind of information on him/her. Manstein also suggested that Gernot and I authorize the deployment of BfV agents to lurk about in hotspots around the country where young people frequented and gathered, especially in Northern Germany, where it was mentioned that a large plurality of the recently converted NDP members originally came from. Heidi also added that with the newly passed Bundestag bill that authorized an enlarged defense spending plan, she would be able to use some of the funds to recruit the assistance of blacklisted private anti-terrorist units to further our efforts to solve this rapidly expanding mystery. By this point, none of us really know if this is still a manhunt at all.

I agreed with Manstein's and Jollenbeck's suggestions but disagreed with Heidi's. We would only bring in private professionals if this situation was getting too out of hand or if national security was at stake. I also thought to myself that if we were ever in such a position, we could always call upon the assistance of Seal Team Six, who would respond to our emergency without demanding some kind of payment, though I do feel as though if I were to do so, I would be somehow using them for our own country's gain. In any case, I orderer Manstein to deploy his men accordingly and Jollenbeck to deploy his.

After the meeting, when Gernot and I drove home with Retia, I asked my husband if this kind of a situation was worth calling the men and women of the American task force. He advised that we ought to wait and see if our own men could resolve this situation by themselves, but if not, we would inform them. Gernot knows that this situation has a great potential to get very out of hand very quickly.

"I'm getting this feeling that we are delving into something we probably shouldn't, but as the leader of this country, I cannot afford not to," Gernot said while shaking his head. "Sometimes I wonder why I ever wanted to be Chancellor in the first place."

I remarked that both of us knew what we had been getting ourselves into. Wondering about something like that...obviously it was too late for such thoughts.

Khal arrived in the early evening to perform another one of Retia's checkups. I took this opportunity to talk to him about the recent developments we have been dealing with over the past few days, and Khal listened with keen interest.

"I have heard from my associates that apparently, this 'Sheriff" individual is considered an urban legend," Khal stated. "Do you know what an urban legend is?"

I said no. It seemed like a phrase that is only used by the youth, something that us older folk would not understand.

"Put simply, it is a modern-day myth, a modern-day supernatural phenomena that gathers publicity amongst the youth...is what I have been able to deduce. In regards to the Sheriff, from what I hear, the Sheriff is a mysterious online hacker who is able to find personal identities and histories of people and cause them to disappear. I suppose in light of these disappearances, it is less of an 'urban legend' and more of a cruel reality. Like a television show plot...except this is no television."

I wholeheartedly agreed. If only some plotlines were kept in fiction...

But speaking with Khal about the matter reinforced the fact that the Sheriff is now, in my mind, a very dangerous entity. Online persona or not, the disappearances are threatening enough that I now am considering him or her a threat to Germany's national security. As we enjoyed some lemonade that Gernot fixed while I was speaking with Khal, Gernot asked Khal what he thought we ought to do to see that this situation was to be resolved quickly and as peacefully as possible.

"Warn the rest of the world," Khal stated after thinking for a while. "Terrorist actions like the one in Hanover the past week should not happen elsewhere. In addition, there may be a larger force at work here, from what I am able to perceive. The NDP, as it seems, may only be one step in a much larger architecture. You must prepare accordingly."

When Gernot asked him how, Khal simply shrugged.

"You are the chancellor. I am but a doctor. My job is not to make national decisions. My job is to treat those who are affected by yours."

After Khal departed for the night, Gernot and I discussed how exactly we would go about "warning" the rest of the world. The Hanover Massacre had already been put on the headlines of all major newspapers in every first-world country across the world; it had already received enough publicity, and nations should have undoubtedly already bolstered their own defenses in response to potential terrorist attacks in their own regions as well. We could perhaps phone the top leaders of the rest of the European Union, or perhaps call an emergency meeting of the EU...but should we do something like that, others may scoff at the scope of our internal problems and possibly declare that our problems were our problems, and that warning others of it was to do no good. I pointed out to my husband that word of our enlarged military spending budget had reached the governments of our neighbors, and I could already sense the political tensions that were building between us because of it. Particularly of our relationships with France and Poland for reasons that should be obvious to any student of history and will thus go unmentioned. Some things never die...

To our surprise, Retia has started speaking in complete sentences tonight. At first I missed it, for I was reading the evening paper in our living room with Gernot, but he pointed it out to me, and we then started talking with our daughter. Her grasp over speaking is still shaky and incomplete, but she is trying her best to speak words that she hears her parents frequently speak or the ship girls speak frequently among themselves. Occasionally she yelled _"FEUER! FEUER!"_ in the middle of our little conversation, making Gernot and I both laugh uncontrollably. It is clear to us who Retia's mentor for _that_ was.

I did not receive a call from the girls today. I can only assume their training is getting the better of them over in England - today is a Monday, after all, so perhaps their training has been especially difficult today. At least they are training during the summer. I had done track and field in my high school days, and I much preferred training in the summer than in the winter. I do not like the cold...


	20. 17-6-2014

**17.6.2014**

As we were waiting for both Jollenbeck's team and the BfV under Commander Manstein's command to report back with hopefully some solid findings on our current problems, the rest of the day today was filled with the usual daily agenda of what the chancellor's wife does in her office in the Reichstag. It would have been a perfectly ordinary day...how do the Americans say, "just another day at the office"...until I received an urgent call from Frau Losira, one of the members of Seal Team Six I have yet to meet in person, but I do recall speaking with her once or twice in the past, during the first few days of the _Wunderwaffe_ 's inception. I could tell the call was urgent because I received the call on my phone while I was driving back home with Retia in the backseat. It is one of my few pet peeves to receive a phone call in the middle of driving, _especially_ driving back home, because I am driving back home for a _reason_. I am not driving back to home to go back to work, I am driving back home to relax and unwind after a long day at the office. The last thing I need is to have yet another phone call that is most likely about something extremely trivial (like a phone call from a security officer reporting ten minutes after I had left the Reichstag that a few tourists had littered near the Platz der Republik.

I can tell I am getting off tangent. I shall stop.

Point being, I do not like answering my phone in the car. It is already against federal law to do so anyway, but I, being the wife of the chancellor and an important member of the Bundestag, can always use my political status as a waiver, and the police officers will overlook it. But it is more of said personal pet peeve rather than respectful observance of the law that I do not answer my phone, and instead wait until I am home to return the call. In any case, I knew this call was urgent because unlike 94% of the phone calls I receive while driving, whoever was calling me kept calling back.. _.four times, to be exact._ I was practically listening to my ringtone (thankfully I am tech-savvy enough to know how to customize my ringtone, I am not _that_ old) the entire drive back home. I could feel Retia's curious eyes stare into my forehead via the rearview mirror. Something tells me that she was also getting rather curious as to why this strange sound was playing over and over.

Once I parked my car inside the garage, I answered the phone right away. I was very tempted to simply yell into the phone in very angry German, but I refrained for the sake of being a model mother in front of my baby daughter, and it was Frau Losira. She expressed relief that I was able to answer; had I not answered the moment I shut off my car engine, she was going to simply send me an email instead, or even fly to Germany herself. Sometimes the freedom that special operatives have scares me.

Frau Losira explained to me that yesterday, they had received a few of the ship girls who were from the Moebius Four Platoon, the original fleet of Japanese ship girls they had constructed before their ownership was claimed and confiscated from them by the Japanese government. Two destroyer girls made an extremely dangerous voyage across the entire Pacific Ocean in an attempt to make contact with them at one of their bases in southern California, all the way from the Japanese province of Chiba. The very thought still has not yet ceased to amaze me. If these Japanese destroyers are anything like Max and Lebe, then that would be like our own German destroyers sailing from Cuxhaven to the coast of Brazil. I would never order them to undertake in such a task...my first reaction was that the Japanese Platoon must be in dire straits for them to send two of their own precious ship girls across an entire ocean like that simply to _communicate_ with their developers.

But that was not all. They had a companion with them, but it was no ordinary companion. They had managed to procure the assistance of an Abyssal ship girl herself, and together, they successfully completed the journey, but Frau Losira said that their journey was fraught with hardship and pain, though she spared me the details. As one should expect of a voyage like that. I would worry myself sick or even to death should Max and Lebe do the same...

It appears that the Japanese fleet, more accurately the Platoon, has no means of sustaining itself. I have a feeling I mentioned this in one of my earlier journal entries, so this may be redundant: after the Japanese wrested control of the Moebius Four Platoon away from Seal Team Six, the JMSDF naval committee, consisting of all the top admirals and naval officers who presided over the operations of both the JMSDF and the Platoon, realized that by doing this, they could no longer turn to the developers for maintenance and repair whenever their Platoon needed it. And because the Platoon would be instrumental in fighting the Abyssal threat, having the Platoon but with no way to sustain it was quickly turning the Platoon into more of a liability than a powerful military asset. The incident that Seal Team Six had notified me of twelve days ago was the catalyst for that dangerous mission of those three ship girls, because several Japanese ship girls had been killed in action in that surprise attack, and they had no way of repairing them. According to the ship girls' testimony, the admirals on the naval committee of the JMSDF ultimately decided that sending two of their ship girls to make contact again with Seal Team Six was the best course of action. Although it was apparently mentioned that Japanese scientists and personnel are currently trying to reverse engineer the technology behind the ship girls in order to understand how to repair them, the admirals correctly guessed that simply trying to consult the original developers of the Platoon would be more worthwhile than wasting an unknown amount of time trying to figure it all out by themselves. Frau Losira laughed at this point, because she said that it was humanly impossible to reverse-engineer the technology behind their Platoon. Our _Wunderwaffe_ team has found this out the hard way as well - quite a few of our own scientists had tried this and have since given up, it was just that complicated.

While this was all very interesting, I asked Frau Losira why she was telling me all this. Was there a point to me knowing this? Was Frau Losira simply showing me courtesy by giving me inside information about other ship girls around the world, or was there something that I was supposed to do here?

She replied that despite the still healthy relationship that exists between Seal Team Six and their Platoon, it needed to still be noted that due to the worsening of Japano-American relations, technically they must regard each other as political enemies. Frau Losira mentioned that there was a chance that the team may actually call in the three ship girls in their current custody and order them to defect from the JMSDF. After all, the Platoon is still configured so that Seal Team Six's orders take highest priority, thus the girls will obey them over anybody else. This possibility is in discussion, according to Frau Losira, and the team is still yet undecided. However, should they eventually decide to keep the girls and order them not to return to Japan, there will also be a possibility of those three particular Japanese ship girls being flown out here to Germany to stay with us in our home for a short period of time. The presence of Japanese ship girls being harbored inside a secret American research base would cause unrest in the chains of American military command should they be discovered, and the team would need time to explain the situation to their superiors in Third Echelon, so until then they would need a safe place to stay, preferably somewhere outside of America and kept out of the public eye. And because of my involvement in the _Wunderwaffe_ branch, Frau Losira said that they would have to rely on me and my family to take care of them, if we could. If we were not comfortable, she said it would be alright, that they could simply look for another safehouse in which to shelter those girls.

I offered my home anyway. I would be lying if I try to claim that I am not interested in meeting these Japanese ship girls. Having met and incorporated our fellow German ship girls into our family, I feel rather tempted to make my acquaintance with the first ship girls the team had constructed. Certainly it would be very interesting to be able to interact with young women from another culture and country, let alone _ship girls_. Plus, I being a politician, perhaps I can speak with them in regards to the political atmosphere and environment currently brewing in Japan to receive some insight and better understand what is going on there.

On the topic of ship girls, I asked if Frau Losira and the rest of the team were being kept up to date with the training program currently being held at Rosyth Dockyards in England at the moment, and she said yes. The team's acting branch in England, the Royal team (the British counterpart to our Wunderwaffe team), was sending them daily reports of the regimen so that they could make sure nothing was awry. Frau Losira also mentioned that one of the Japanese ship girls whom they received had recently been promoted to the impressive rank of Second Lieutenant in the JMSDF, an unprecedented event, for this was the first time a ship girl had been given rank and uniform, something the developers themselves had not expected to have happen, given the Japanese government's nearly imperialistic militarism recently. Therefore, there was also a chance that should the team decide to keep those girls, they could also instead send them over to Rosyth Dockyards to help train both the Royal Girls and our own Wunderwaffe Girls. When I expressed initial doubt about how far simply the merit of rank would go in terms of their training expertise, Frau Losira responded swiftly by saying that these particular ship girls were veterans. One of them, named Samidare (very confusing to pronounce with German linguistic tendencies), was the Lieutenant, and she had been one of the first five ship girls assigned to the original Platoon at that base in Okinawa, so she has been serving ever since the beginning, apparently. The second, named Shigure (also very confusing to pronounce as a German), was by far one of the strongest ship girls they had ever built and was also a seasoned veteran. And the third, named Harusame (all these Japanese names...so difficult to pronounce properly!), was the ship girl who had been "Abyssalized" and recently reverted and was also apparently quite strong, although Frau Losira did not go into detail. These three could very well lead the training program if the team so chose, but time would tell.

Finally, before we ended the call, to my surprise, Frau Losira asked me how my baby daughter Losira was doing. Taken back by this suddenly personal question, I automatically replied that she was doing well, a bit robotically, without thinking. I quickly followed my answer up with a question of why she wanted to know. Frau Losira giggled and said that she, too, had a baby boy she and her fiance, who in fact was Herr Deimos, her fellow teammate on Seal Team Six, were also raising. Because they never mentioned anything about having a baby like myself, I couldn't help but express my surprise vocally and gave her a two-year-belated congratulations, as it seems that Frau Losira's and Herr Deimos's baby boy, named Damon, is now two years old. Frau Losira thanked me and said that perhaps, in a more peaceful and less stressful time, we could perhaps introduce our babies to each other.

"I'm sorry if I sound like I'm being a bit too friendly," she apologized, "but after thinkin' a little, I think that the two of us aren't so different. We're both tryin'a raise kids when we probably shouldn't be."

I knew what she meant. I think Frau Losira and I could be very good friends, should we spend some more time getting to know one another.


	21. 18-6-2014

**18.6.2014**

I received a call from Sir Sinclair from the British MI-6 almost immediately after I arrived in my office in the morning. The Abyssals have attacked the Netherlands.

At 0819 hours, according to Dutch civilian eyewitness accounts, artillery bombardments struck the town of Haarlem, just barely outside of the outskirts of the capital city of Amsterdam. The windmills of the dikes located there were targeted and destroyed, along with some 215 civilian casualties as a result of the collateral damage.

At 0825 hours, Abyssal forces were first sighted off the coast of the barrier island of Texel, essentially northwest Netherlands. They occupied the island and began shelling the Netherlands in every direction - targeting as many of the dikes as they could from the island of Texel. Not only did they target the dikes, but they also struck against all military points within their range, crippling the Netherlands' ability to counterattack. Having been informed of this, the Dutch King William Andersson contacted British Parliament to plead for help. Apparently the Dutch King only truly trusts British military power to relieve them of their sudden national crisis, which I do not blame him for.

Sir Sinclair, calling me at around 0840 hours, did so to inform me that he intended to send his contingent of ship girls, the Royal Girls, down to the Netherlands to eliminate this sudden Abyssal threat, but because he felt that he and his fellow Britons had no authority to give our German ship girls orders, he had ordered his own Admirals and commanders at Rosyth Dockyard to remain on standby, because if by calling me and discovering that I would indeed give him permission to command our girls as the situation saw fit, Sir Sinclair preferred to send them all together, as opposed to sending them in two splintered factions. The ship girls at Rosyth Dockyard were the most potent counterattack force, he said, because of how quickly they could be deployed and how quickly they could reach the Abyssals. Mobilizing their warships would simply take too long, and the few warships they did have that could redirect to the Netherlands fast enough would be powerless by themselves to do much of anything if the ship girls did not deploy.

I authorized Sir Sinclair to temporarily order our girls to follow the Royal Girls into battle, but only for this battle. I also made it very clear that should any of them die in the process, they must recover the bodies at all costs. Sir Sinclair already understood this, as it would seem, for he knew that recovering the bodies would be very important.

If he could not recover any of the bodies that were sunk in action, I swore to God that I would make his country pay. Sir Sinclair assured me that such a thing would not happen. Damn right it better not.

Shortly afterwards, as expected, every single phone in the Reichstag was ringing like the second coming of Christ was upon us. No less than twenty-six times did my office door get pushed open, kicked open, slammed open, all kinds of open by various Reichstag members and other staff in the building, including my own husband, who did so to urgently inform me of the situation developing in the Netherlands. The first few times, admittedly, I was startled - but after those few times, the whole door getting abused aspect of today's day at the office quickly got rather repetitive. By the end of the day I was considering calling in a maintenance crew to take a look at my office door to see if it requires some replacement or fixing of some kind after all the abuse it took. And putting a sign on my door that says "PLEASE DO NOT KICK OPEN THIS DOOR". I suppose it is no longer in anyone's book of manners to knock before entering, hm? What was this world even become...forget the Abyssals, how about we fix our own people first, _then_ focus on the others...

In the meantime, I managed to meet with Heidi and ordered her to mobilize an air fleet to send to the Netherlands where the Abyssals were attacking. We, as a neighbor country of the Netherlands, needed to assist in its defense in order to maintain our political stance in the European Union; after all, our neighboring countries are rather suspicious of us because they know of our increased military budget spending that was only very recently passed, so we needed demonstrate that this increase in military spending is for the greater good of the continent. Plus, more personally, because I am one of the few amounts of people in the world who has a bit better understanding of the Abyssal threat than the general populace, I knew what this attack _could_ imply should it go unchecked. While Heidi was busy contacting our Air Force commanders to organize an air fleet to deploy within thirty minutes, I called my husband, who was taking in volumes of calls himself because of this crisis, and asked him to call the Dutch King or the Dutch Parliament to inform them that we intended to send air forces to assist, and that we needed their permission to fly into Dutch airspace. My husband in fact was directed to speak with King Andersson himself, who hastily gave our troops permission to cross over into Dutch airspace. He cared more about protecting his nation and dealing with this threat much more than he cared about politics at the moment.

By 0915 hours, our Air Force prepared a squadron of five Panavia Tornadoes from _Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader_ 51 (Immelmann) to deploy, and the Army sent over seven Eurocopter Tigers from the joint NATO military operations base in Geilenkirchen, our closest possible base to the scene. I then consulted with the BfV and determined that we needed to put the entire country on alert. I contacted my regional counterparts of the entire European Union to suggest that they do the same, for this could be the beginning of a war against those Abyssal terrorists that have been rumored of in the past few weeks.

At 0930 hours, I met with Heidi and our top military generals and advisors, along with my husband and the President in order to monitor the situation as it developed. Gernot advised me that it may be time to explain to everyone just how big of a threat these Abyssal enemies are, and I agreed. Now that the Abyssals have made an attack on our continent, their threat is now realized, and making sure our country's advisors understand their threat is vital if we are to stand up to them. Our Major General insisted that we simply crush this terrorist band with ease. What could a terrorist organization possibly have that an entire air squadron of fighter jets and heavy attack helicopters could not eradicate? However, both Gernot and I ordered him to stand down. These Abyssals were capable of things we did not know, and we were not going to sacrifice perfectly good air assets and pilots in order to find out now. Besides, these Abyssals were deliberately destroying the dikes in the Netherlands, and massive flooding was imminent in the region. Already the Dutch government had given evacuation orders to its people living in the areas of the country that would be flooded - these Abyssals were not here to simply make a farce. We needed to wait until the ship girls could engage the enemy first, and then the auxiliary British warships in position to attack, along with our air squadron, could engage as well.

That was when we realized nobody else had a clue what we were talking about. Ship girls? Was this a code word for something? What were _ship girls_?

There was not enough time to explain everything, but luckily at 0934 hours, the ship girls deployed from Rosyth Dockyards made contact with the Abyssal forces at Texel Island. We were in direct communications with Sir Sinclair, who was in turn in communications with the crew aboard one of the British destroyers standing by to provide ranged missile support to the ship girl fleet if need be and were observing the combat. Once the Abyssals were confirmed to be retaliating back against the ship girls, Gernot ordered our air assets standing by to attack.

By noon, the battle was concluded. Our ship girls had emerged victorious, sinking or compelling the rest to retreat back up north, off Texel and into the North Sea. British UAVs that began tracking them upon their retreat currently point them to be taking refuge somewhere in the Faroe Islands before returning to base, and if I am to be informed correctly, I believe Sir Sinclair briefly mentioned a pursuit attack to flush out the vulnerable Abyssals from the Faroe Archipelago.

Thankfully, none of either the Royal Girls or our own Wunderwaffe Girls suffered any fatalities, meaning no one was killed in action. However, Sir Sinclair reported that Bismarck, having put the burden of commanding the frontal ranks of the fleet upon herself, was very close to sinking. Graf Zeppelin, our newest addition to the German ship girl fleet, proved herself the most effective carrier in the fleet while taking significant damage herself. They all safely returned to Rosyth Dockyard, with one of the nearby British destroyers picking them up from the scene of the battle to transport them back to their home port.

Afterwards, our generals demanded us to tell them what this "ship girl fleet" was all about. Their demands were made stronger by the curiosity of the President as well, who said he'd also like to know where and how both we and the British managed to acquire these young women who were capable of standing on water and fighting with large guns attached to their backs.

There was no use trying to hide it from them. Not that Gernot and I were _trying_ to hide anything to begin with. But because this is now the first high-profile Abyssal attack on European soil, we must also reveal our "secret weapon" against them. So Gernot and I explained to them all the existence of the computerized humans who have been built to fight at sea using miniaturized versions of outdated armament technology. We spent nearly two hours explaining everything - how we received this technology from a secret American special operations team who was responsible for the patent behind the ship girls, how we had been sheltering them here in Berlin and keeping them out of the public eye for the most part, and how we had sent them to Britain for a training regimen because we had no adequate training facility with which to accommodate them.

Most of our Generals and even the President were thrilled to learn that we had a secret technology with which to deal with this looming Abyssal threat. The generals who showed their enthusiasm for this project did not specifically state this, but I suspect they were happy about the ship girls because their presence means that we can simply use them to attack the Abyssals and thus save precious men, supplies, funds, and resources that would have otherwise been poured into counter-Abyssal operations, but their reasoning is not needed, only their support. The Major General, the same general who tried to order our air assets at Texel to attack the Abyssals immediately, was the only one who voiced any real opposition, but he was quickly talked down by his fellow commissioned officers. The President advised us to once again get into contact with this American team and, because we had explained that our construction of additional ship girls were limited to their authorization, ask them for permission to build more. Gernot said that we would see what we could do.

Unfortunately, because the Abyssal attack destroyed many of the dikes in the Netherlands, much of the country is now underwater as of this entry writing. Amsterdam is completely flooded, and Lelystad is in the process of being drained wherever possible. Our western border with the Netherlands is crammed with Dutch refugees who have evacuated from their homes in the flooded regions of their country, and our border military and police are working around the clock to set up emergency shelters for them in cooperation with the Dutch police authorities to house them temporarily until all the water can be drained. However, it is not just the water that must be drained, all their homes and businesses must be rebuilt once the water is gone. How much money, time and effort must be put into that is another issue that nobody wants to deal with.


	22. 19-6-2014

**19.6.2014**

In approximately two hours, the entire world will now know that there exist a group of superhumans known as "ship girls" and the technology that was created to make their existence possible.

I say this half-jokingly, but I rather that I need not say this at all. The Abyssal attack on the Netherlands has been made as public as terrorist attacks like this can be made, and all of Europe has now been awoken to the Abyssal threat. But the Abyssal threat has now brought the ship girls to the light as well, as unauthorized news helicopters from Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands themselves had all swarmed the airspace of the battle as our joint fleet of British and German fleet personnel defeated the Abyssal fleet, providing perfect coverage and acquiring enough footage before our air support arrived to chase them away to prove that, without a doubt, there now walk (and sail) two kinds of humanoid beings that the world had never before seen.

Indeed, the news channels are so inundated with repeating video footage of the battle off the Dutch coast that I have not even bothered turning on any television sets today. Why would I, when all I must do to receive my news fix for the day is to simply step outside of my office in the Reichstag and listen, just for a moment, to the ambience of the hallway, where there is bound to be at least one flat-screen monitor broadcasting yet another fascinated or terrified news caster shouting something else unintelligible about aliens and the confirmation of extraterrestrial life forms. I can already tell that the next few weeks immediately following the attack on the Netherlands will be very, very tiring.

But the one person I pity the most is my own husband. Following the attack on the Netherlands, when the media gave unforgiving evidence that it was indeed the German Air Force whose jets had arrived to secure the scene. This was also further exacerbated by the fact that one of our generals who was present at our emergency meeting yesterday, in which we monitored the progress of the battle, had been stopped and interrogated as he was leaving the Reichstag and let loose the implication that Germany was in fact in possession of these so-called "ship girls", though he was merely only stating what he had heard. So now all morning today Gernot has had to attend an emergency press meeting in which droves upon droves of thirsty journalists and other media personnel have quite literally stormed the Reichstag in order to ask my husband even just one question. I, being more knowledgeable about our own girls, offered to take his place, but Gernot said that he would not have me, his wife, go through such a thing. He said that I should rather conserve my energy to take care of our daughter.

I do appreciate his consideration, but sometimes I do wish my husband would give himself some breathing room.

But I do not exaggerate when I say that the news of the so-called "discovery" of the Abyssals and the ship girls is spreading across the whole world like wildfire. I know this because I have received no less than one hundred and sixty-three phone calls from fellow European political entities calling in to confirm that Germany was in fact in possession of these strange new weapons of war. Yes, I counted them. And yes, all of these calls contained a very similar and quite prophetic message: why was Germany hiding the fact that they possessed these seemingly terrifying new weapons and technology? Of course, I did not deny or confirm any of these allegations, but I know that I do not have to say anything for the rest of the world to soon find out, sooner or later, that Germany does indeed possess ship girls. Such was the urgency in the voices of my counterparts throughout the rest of continental Europe that one would have believed the ship girls the new world-ending military technology, similar to how the nuclear bomb and atomic technology were treated in the days of the Cold War.

Indeed, the Abyssal terrorist attack on the Netherlands has not only plunged the country into an emergency state of crisis but also the political theatre of the entire European continent, including Great Britain. I am a seasoned politician, and I know how my peers in the other countries of the European Union will think. And I know that they will view our military budget expansion bills as evidence that Germany was in fact secretly building up a clandestine fleet of naval personnel in order to sway the military hegemony of the European Union countries into Germany's favor; the fact that there is still some World War II stigma associated with our country when military matters are involved does not help this. In fact, I should expect this same stigma to grow worse when the names of our German ship girls are discovered and projected to the rest of the world, and I definitely will not have enough to hear on this matter for the weeks to come.

This is certainly no time to be a politician.

Or perhaps that statement was self-evident...

In the wake of the Dutch terrorist attack, I received a call from Sir Sinclair, thankfully. It was a much needed respite from all the calls from every other European head of government and their mothers. He, too, had been going through a very similar ordeal, but on top of answering many an angry phone call, he also was subjected to emergency press meetings like my husband was. I sent him my condolences over the phone, which he gladly received with a bit of a tired chuckle.

We discussed for a few hours what this event would mean for the two of our nations. At the time of our phone call, Gernot entered my office, very haggard and exhausted, and informed me that he had no choice but to admit that Germany was in fact in possession of a small number of ship girls, that the evidence provided by the media was too overwhelming to deny. He had spared the British fleet by declining to comment on the media's questions of possible British personnel, for the media coverage depicted the British ship girls, several of whom had British naval ensign designs on their uniforms or weapons, but Sir Sinclair informed me that he had already revealed the existence of the British fleet as well, so there were no secrets to be kept there. We know now that the rest of the world is well aware (or soon to be well aware) of our possessions of ship girls, so it appears that we as nations have no choice but to cooperate with each other in order to defend our possessions, for there will surely be calls from other European nations for us to deactivate our fleets.

This also calls into question a few other areas of debate: how ought we act when soon, more questions come flooding in regarding the origins of our fleets and our methods of construction and/or acquisition? Naturally, sooner or later, the American Seal Team Six team must become involved. They are the proper owners and holders of the fleet personnel copyrights and patents, whatever they use. Is it our place to reveal to the world, when questioned, that our ship girls were not our own original creations? If we were to word our response as such, what would the rest of the world infer? That perhaps there exists another powerful entity or organization that has enough power and resources to create a world-altering technology? Then that would seem as though there is another malicious entity that exists in the world that has enough influence to bring Britain and Germany, two of the most influential nations in Europe already, under their wing, which is not the case at all, unless this malicious entity can be thought to be the A.A.H.W. that Seal Team Six has warned us about. What would they want us to do? Surely they must have heard of the Netherlands attack by now, even though we have not heard from them or attempted to contact them. Sir Sinclair made a point to ask me this, whether or not we had made contact with the American team in regards to what we ought to do, for these were their inventions at were at stake. I told him that it may be better to simply wait for their reply. They are Americans; they will not let an incident like this go unanswered.

The last area of discussion I talked about with Sir Sinclair was the Japan question. Now that our fleets have been discovered, what will be the response of the Japanese government? For we both know that the largest fleet of ship personnel belongs to none other than Japan, but because the Netherlands attack and the previous Hamburg Massacre have drawn all of the political and media attention to the center of Europe, nobody else is looking at Japan. Sir Sinclair grimly observed that in light of Japan's quiet rising militarism and the recent conversion of their government towards rightist government and military policies, this could be an opportunity for them to exert their own power in the Asian hemisphere. Because no one seems to be accusing Japan of harboring any such fleet of their own, they could be saving their own fleet until the perfect opportunity arises, when the reveal of their own ship girls can effect the most amount of influence...or damage, depending on what they do with them. Or perhaps they, too, once they receive word of the Abyssal attack on the Netherlands (which they should know by now, if they are such a proper government), may start feeling pressure and rush to further their own political agenda before their own fleet is revealed?

With these questions heavy on my mind, I returned home with my husband. Gernot had called Khal, who fortunately was available, and asked him to look after our daughter for the day, offering to pay him a generous sum for his troubles (as a doctor, Khal must have lost a lot of money today closing his office to help us), but Khal more generously refused. "Caring for the daughter of the leaders of my nation is perhaps the most patriotism I can demonstrate for my country," he stated quite grandly. Upon seeing him off, I went to my room and contacted the girls in Britain, and Graf Zeppelin, our newest carrier addition to the fleet, to my surprise, answered it.

She is a most well-conducted girl, was my first impression. Despite having bandages covering most of her upper body and her left eye, she acted as professional as any properly trained German soldier would act. No extra details, no miscellaneous information or sidetracking. I am now guilty of developing a preference for a ship girl, which I have managed to refrain from doing with everyone else, and the preference is being pulled towards Graf Zeppelin. I must properly apologize to the others when they return.

Graf informed me that they (the German ship girls) were now in stable condition and would repair their damages hastily in order to be ready to respond to another possible Abyssal threat, should it manifest itself. I asked her if the ship girls, both them and their British comrades, were aware of the fact that the world now knows about their existence, and Graf replied no. They had not been informed, understandably enough; they cannot be given any distractions to their work if there should be another Abyssal attack in the near future. Publicity, attention, media coverage - everything comes second to their intended duties as fleet personnel. In any case, though, I did ask Graf to inform the others that their lives were no longer to be guarded by the secretive walls of the _Wunderwaffe_ program; the world would now be watching.

Gernot has just asked me if he ought to give Seal Team Six a call, but I decided against it. We have heard and talked enough today. There is only so much a human mind can handle, no matter how great its status.


	23. 20-6-2014

**20.6.2014**

Upon arriving at the Reichstag, the entire government building was surrounded by press and media crews. Never in all of the years Gernot and I have been involved in politics had we seen the Reichstag so... _besieged_ by such throngs of people. Never mind the fact that they were all in some way associated with the media and were there to ask us annoyingly infinite amounts of questions, it was just such a stunning sight to see that Gernot asked me if today might be a good day to use one of our paid leave days that we have yet to use ever since Gernot took office as Chancellor.

Because Gernot had urgent matters to attend to, and because he had been the one to confront the press yesterday in the emergency press meetings, I took my turn in dealing with the media and stayed behind to answer what questions I could before my patience ran out. So surrounded by the local Reichstag security and with countless numbers of eager microphones pointed in my direction, I gave what comments I could. The questions were more or less what I had expected the press to ask: Was this "Abyssal" threat a new threat that had just sprung up recently, or did the governments of Europe already know and were trying to hide it all this time? What exactly were these Abyssals, and what were these "ship girls" that seemed to be the hot topic since yesterday? Were these Abyssals aliens? What is their agenda? What is _our_ agenda in dealing with this terrorist threat? Who would be held responsible, if there was someone controlling the Abyssals? Just how large was our force of "ship girls" or "naval personnel"? And was this Abyssal attack somehow related to the recent Hanover Massacre? But what surprised me quite a bit was the urgency and the overall theme of the questions I received. Everyone seemed to want to know:

Was the Abyssal attack the signal of a new armed conflict? If it was, does it have a chance to develop into a fully-fledged war?

Considering the recent political problems between Russia and Ukraine, this hardly comes as a surprise. Such problems had only been very recently resolved, albeit in a tense agreement, if one could even call it that. It was a conflict in which violence on the scale of a full-size war was entirely possible to break out, and European countries looking on sighed a breath of relief once the two countries were able to come to a truce...for the time being. If there is one thing I claim to know for sure about this continent, it is that the vast majority of the countries here do not want war. Peace has been treating us very well, almost spoiling us. War will only serve to plunge the efforts of the past decades into irrelevancy, should it occur. There are a few countries I know who may very well appreciate a war, no matter what the size, but I suppose that is why no one listens to them.

In response to the press, I gave them the usual answers a good politician must give in situations such as this, the vaguest answers that yet still instill hope and confidence, and upon giving those comments, I retreated with the help of security into the Reichstag to finally begin my work for the day. I spent a few minutes in my office upon arriving there sitting in my chair and catching my breath. I wonder how it is that my older colleagues have the energy to perform this career day in, day out.

Reports indicate that the knowledge of the Abyssals and the ship girls are now officially widespread; it is impossible to convince the people of Europe that these entities are made up fabrications. There are some who are calling this a government conspiracy of some description, others who call this a terrorist attack (which is most likely the case), and still others who still do not believe that Abyssals and ship girls exist, although they are a particular minority. Truth be told, I think that the faster we officially announce to the country about the existence of our small fleet of ship girls, the better. In the face of possible Abyssal terrorist attacks in the future, the people will be demanding to know why the government, we, are not taking steps to prevent these kinds of attacks to protect them. I foresee the possibility of complications arising from this political maneuver of revealing our own fleet to the public eye, but politics is all about choosing the lesser of two evils, to discern which choice has more manageable consequences than the other - and I cannot fathom keeping our fleet a secret to be the more logical choice. Perhaps my reasoning somewhere may be mistaken, but that is why I have my husband to consult me.

So after our work and taking our lunch break, Gernot came to my office to discuss this matter with me in private. I explained my reasoning to him in regards to announcing the existence of our fleet to the press. Simply put, this was not something we could afford to keep secret. The Abyssal attack, the one that flooded the Netherlands, are sure to continue, and we need to have a way to stop them effectively while at the same time letting the people of Europe know that there was indeed a way to defeat them before they can inflict catastrophic damage, as what has happened two days ago. Of course, that wasn't to say we were going to turn our fleet personnel into something of war heroes. We would simply let the knowledge of our fleet go public, but we would refrain from giving specific information about them. Gernot pointed out that by doing this, we would essentially be feeding our enemies the same information, but again, I repeated to him that we would not leak sensitive data. All we would do is let the public know that Germany and England had a way to deal with the Abyssals, and that they would handle the situation. Raising awareness and leaking information are two very different things.

Eventually, I was able to convince Gernot to agree with me, and we planned a press conference tomorrow in which we would announce this. Once we had settled on this agreement, Gernot returned to his office to continue his work while I contacted Sir Sinclair of England to inform him of our intentions. While Sir Sinclair was mostly in agreement with our reasoning, he did object to our press conference that we will hold tomorrow, calling it "hasty" and "unnecessary". According to Sir Sinclair, it would be most unwise to reveal these news to the world when our fleets were still in joint operation and training. He advised that we should at least wait until the girls return from their training at the Rosyth Dockyards next week, since it has already been a week. The Italian ship girls should have returned to their home in Rome by now, given the time, and I pray that their short week of training and participation in battle have given them the live combat experience they needed. But until our own girls return home, Sir Sinclair recommended that we wait. It would be better to at least give such an announcement when we had the presence of our fleet with us in Germany to begin with anyway, in the situation that an attack comes immediately following the announcement. Because we do not know who our true enemies are, either the Abyssals or perhaps an overarching organization controlling them, we do not have any knowledge of their information-gathering capabilities. Because our press conference will likely be televised (I could choose not to have it televised if we so desire), the announcement will be broadcast immediately, and if any enemy happens to see it and decide to retaliate, it would be best if our fleet was on stand by to prevent that retaliation.

Myself convinced by Sir Sinclair, I paged my husband and informed him of my conversation with the Englishman. Gernot was quite relieved that Sir Sinclair was able to convince me otherwise - he, too, stated that he was not very comfortable with my intention of making this announcement so soon, and he heartily agreed with Sir Sinclair's point of having our fleet back at home first before making any such huge announcement. So as of now, our press conference to reveal the existence of our naval personnel fleet is to be delayed until further notice, or least until our fleet returns home to Berlin.

Then, I received a phone call from Seal Team Six, from Herr Big. A strange name, but apparently it is his callsign. He had some big news to share.

By far the most surprising piece of information was the fact that he and his team in Seal Team Six were preparing to ship over a small team of ship girls from Japan. Apparently, if he is to be believed, a tiny fleet of three destroyers from the Japanese mainland had been tasked to traverse across the whole Pacific Ocean to reach their base in Southern California on the West Coast to reach them and make contact with them, because conventional methods of communication had been cut off between Japan and the United States, effectively severing the ties the development team had with their own Japanese creations. They had carried out this mission because several of their kind had been sunk in that recent attack on the Yokosuka Naval Yards, and because the Japanese had foolishly seized control of the Moebius Four Platoon without first being advised on how to maintain them, those three destroyers were to negotiate with Seal Team Six to either somehow repair their casualties or reveal their reconstruction methods. Understandably, Seal Team Six seemed willing to do neither. And instead of letting those ship girls return, Herr Big stated that they were to deploy to Europe to assist with the Abyssal contingency here, along with two additional ship girls they were in the middle of reconstructing to replace the ones who had sunk at the naval yard attack. These Japanese ship girls would deploy directly to our control and would act as a direct unit of our armed forces, as well as maintain connections with the other naval personnel fleets in Britain and Italy.

Even more surprising was Herr Big's clear intention of giving these ship girls who were going to deploy to our control rank and uniform. One of these ship girls we will expect under our command soon, whose name is Samidare (a strange name indeed), apparently has been granted a real rank in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, the modern Japanese navy, though she is apparently but a lowly lieutenant. But even despite this relatively low officer's rank, Herr Big said to me that she now wields military authority over all ship girls, for she is to be their direct superior. The fact that she is only a destroyer concerns me: if this Samidare were a battleship or a carrier, then I would admittedly be more open to the notion that she is to be the direct superior to the rest of her kind in the field, but upon voicing this concern, Herr Big stated that Samidare was one of the original five ship girls who had first been deployed to the naval base in Okinawa, underneath the command of the young American Admiral whom they had sent to train them. Despite her status as a destroyer, she has been fighting for a longer time than most other naval personnel, particularly our own, and is very well experienced in combat. And it would not be just her alone who would hold rank: another ship girl in this small fleet, named Shigure (again, such a strange name), would also be given rank and uniform and be promoted to the rank of Lieutenant as well.

Finally, they gave word that they had successfully submitted the schematics for two new Italian naval personnel, those by the names of Zara and Pola. The Italian fleet could expect to receive them in the near future as a bolster against possible Abyssal attacks in the future.

On that note, Herr Big advised me to look for another call from either him or someone else on his team in regards to the finalization of their auxiliary fleet's deployment to our command sometime tomorrow around the same time and ended the conversation.

There is a glaring question that I have in mind that I wished to ask, but I suppose I will ask it tomorrow, when that phone call arrives.


	24. 21-6-2014

**21.6.2014**

I am well aware that in my previous entry, I had mentioned the fact that I held a glaring question that I intended to ask Herr Big or anyone else from Seal Team Six who would call today, but now I must admit, I have forgotten what question that was. All I know that it was a very urgent question, not in terms of time, but in terms of its implications. I can only hope failing to remember it will not have grave consequences in the future.

But first, the chronology of the events of today. The most important order of business for today were the series of phone calls and emails I made and sent and received in regards to both an emergency European Union meeting and an emergency convening of the United Nations. Now that the situation in the Netherlands has somewhat stabilized, I have been in frequent and regular communications with the rest of the leaders and major politicians and cabinet members of governments across the continent. We will gather here in Berlin in two days' time for the emergency European Union meeting, and we will convene in London two days following the EU congregation.

The news of the existence of ship girls, fleet personnel, naval personnel, whichever the proper designation for them is, has truly shaken the governments of Europe, with, of course, the exception of England. The other "exception" is Italy, but because the existence of the Italian ship girls has not been revealed quite yet, Italy has made no statement, but because many other countries in the EU have raised questions about Germany's and England's possessions of fleet personnel, the fact that Italy has not joined in on the discussion quite like the rest have will undoubtedly raise eyebrows on many a politician in the EU sooner or later. Gernot has even taken time to phone Marco to tell him precisely this, and Marco has stated he is already well aware of his situation in context to his own ship girls. We all know that Italy will soon join us in the triumvirate of countries who possess a fleet of ship girls, but understandably, Marco wishes to make this knowledge public at the most opportune time. Being not only his counterparts and political allies but also his friends, Gernot and I understand his sentiment wholly. If we could have had the opportunity to avoid this kind of situation, we would have, but...such is the way of politics in this day and age; not many things happen in the world of politics that can be viewed as wholesomely good or beneficial.

But back onto the topic of the emergency meetings: both of the emergency congregations planned for this week will, not surprisingly, address the new threat of the Abyssal terrorists and, perhaps the bigger issue on the table here, the possession of fleet personnel. Personally, judging by the communications that I have been holding with my colleagues across the continent, I say the latter topic is the bigger issue of concern that will be discussed because in the emails and phone calls I have made and received, the first things they ask me all are in regards to our ship girls somehow. I know that they are all restraining themselves from pouring forth a deluge of questions regarding them, but they cannot because they must save it for our meetings. I do not look forward to those meetings because of this reason. Mark my words, these meetings will be less about the protection of our continent and our people and more about how they can either seek to gain fleet personnel of their own to bolster their own navies or to restrict our usage of them.

Perhaps it is only because of my lifelong career in politics and jaded nature when it comes to dealing with my fellow European colleagues, but politics has never changed and nor will it ever change: human beings will always strive to help themselves before they look to provide help where it is sorely needed. When they do act to provide aid or act in the interest of everyone, typically it is only because they know that they themselves or their own countries will benefit enough to warrant their cooperation. And if cooperation is not deemed worthy of their time, they will simply act to degrade those around them to prevent other nations from becoming too "strong" in their own eyes. I am not saying politics is a dishonest career; it is just that honest men and women have no place in a career or a field of expertise like this.

And, of course, Gernot and I are not honest people. How do you think we have the positions and offices we have today? I suppose our silver lining is such that we are more honest than the vast majority of our colleagues...but this is politics, that is not saying very much at all. How should I say...we merely strive to do what we feel is best for our family. And now that Retia has entered into our lives, family has become much, much more important.

I also contacted Sir Sinclair. He informed me that he would also intend to join us at the United Nations meeting in Parliament, being the one in charge of organizing the German-British joint training program at Rosyth Dockyards and being very highly ranked in the echelons of MI-6. I must make note that Sir Sinclair does not subscribe to the definitions of ordinary politicians that I have described above - perhaps it is because he is not actually a true politician, rather merely an officer belonging to a renowned and prestigious British counter-intelligence agency. But I digress - he also informed me that the training program with the ship girls would have to be terminated early due to the incident of the Abyssals attacking the Netherlands, and our girls would be sent home early, ahead of schedule, tomorrow. In the context of the incident of the Netherlands, I agree with Sir Sinclair and am thankful for his consideration, though I do wish that the girls would have stayed longer to train just that little bit more, for it is what they would have wished. However, now with the additional, secret context of the impending arrival of American - well, I should say, Japanese - ship girls whom we will receive soon, I am now actually quite glad that our German girls will be coming home early, so that the Japanese ship girls can meet them and get to know one another.

Sir Sinclair has asked me to keep this between us: according to his agency's surveillance operations underway in the continent, he and his colleagues have discovered that all of the major countries in Europe are beginning to mobilize and bolster their coastal defenses and navies. French warships are now beginning to more actively patrol the French coasts, as are Spanish and Portuguese warships. The same applies to Poland and Russia, most particularly Russia, but we all rather expected that development; the Russians preparing for a possible war against the Abyssals comes as no surprise whatsoever. Generally speaking, he said, all countries with major coastlines in contact with any major body of water has been mobilizing their militaries and navies in response to the attack on the Netherlands - necessary and understandable precautions, given the scale of the incident and the huge amounts of property damage dealt. Sir Sinclair stated that while the mass mobilization of naval forces across the continent may seem understandable at first glance, he himself saw this as a sharply increasingly glaring point of concern for the main reason that the Abyssals may not only be a naval threat; he expressed concern that the Abyssals may have a land contingency as well.

I personally could not see eye to eye with him on this matter. I cited the attacks on the Japanese naval bases earlier in the year; all of the Abyssal strikes in Japan had been naval attacks. If the Abyssals had prepared a land contingent or even had one in mind, would they not have attacked a land target by now? This is the third major, public Abyssal attack in the world so far - how many more would they carry out before attacking an inland target would be viable? That being said, though, I did agree with the general notion that perhaps a land attack must also be guarded against, for I mentioned to him the Hanover Massacre that occurred in Germany not long ago. Sir Sinclair knew what I was talking about; he, through his own communications with Seal Team Six, learned of the existence of covert terrorist organizations like the A.A.H.W. He told me that while he had no solid evidence to support his claim, he would not be surprised if we were to find out that the A.A.H.W. would be behind all of this. The mere fact that they are so mysterious, without any tip-offs from Seal Team Six, is evidence enough to point to them as the culprits behind the Abyssal attacks - and this is further bolstered by the fact that other well-known terrorist organizations have not ever stepped up to claim responsibility for any of the attacks so far, whether it be the Hanover Massacre or the Abyssals'.

After my phone call with Sir Sinclair, Gernot and I returned home again with Retia. Retia has very clearly grasped the sense of "home", for she has started to become very lively and jovial when we leave the office and the Reichstag and drive back home. And when we do return home, she eagerly begins to toddle about in the house, tripping and falling a couple times because she has only recently discovered her ability to run. After such a long day at the office, just the mere sight of seeing our daughter learn how to run around the house is enough to bleed off all the exhaustion and stress. Why would I need a stress relief ball when I have the pleasure of watching my own daughter bring me happiness?

But as foretold, shortly after we arrived back home tonight, we received another call from Seal Team Six; this time, it was Frau Lauren, with whom I may or may not have spoken with before. She gave me the itinerary of the arrival of the Japanese fleet personnel: they would arrive either late at night tomorrow or very early morning two days from now at Berlin Tegel Airport. Surprisingly, apparently they will be arriving via a civilian flight, and Frau Lauren explained that this was to keep their presence a secret from standard military forces in Germany; their presence here apparently must be kept a closely guarded secret for as long as possible from the Japanese government, from whom they have taken operational authority. From Tegel Airport, a private shuttle would be arranged to pick them up and drive them to our home. Not only did Frau Lauren give me their itinerary, but she also emailed me the profiles of all five girls who would join us here, profiles that contain their names and other personal information.

Then, Frau Lauren, asked that I do my best to look after these girls and ask our own German ship girls to do the same. The nature of their deployment here to Germany is apparently dampening their spirits - quite a bit so, for as Herr Big mentioned to me yesterday, they had expected to return to Japan shortly after they had completed their trans-Pacific voyage to reach Seal Team Six, and they were extremely disappointed to learn that their developers had now ordered them to deploy elsewhere, this time practically halfway around the world. They would be homesick, unhappy, and unmotivated, and it needed to be our responsibility to make sure their needs were tended to.

That we will do without question. If these five girls are our hope of answering the Abyssal threat here in Europe, we will make this their home away from home if need be.


	25. 22-6-2014

**22.6.2014**

Surprisingly, given how hectic our lives have been over the past week, today, the Wedekind household has been able to enjoy a quiet Sunday at home. Gernot and I were truly able to have an eventless morning, afternoon, and early evening with our daughter. Because of the exhaustion and stress accrued on our minds through the busy schedules of the past week, we did not take Retia anywhere or left the house to eat at any restaurants, though such excursions would have been very nice. Instead, we stayed at home, and Gernot and I were able to cook together for once in a very long time. I do not remember the last time we had the time to cook together; it was our favorite pastime as a couple during our time as fiances. We taught Retia further on how to walk, and she has been making quite extensive progress in such a short time and is now somewhat competent in running as well, although she still stumbles and trips over her own feet often. But like her sense of home, she also seems to have understood that this was a process of learning she is going through, and she has not once begun to cry whenever she makes a mistake and falls to the floor. She simply picks herself back up and continues to run and learn. And while she has napped, Gernot and I spent her napping time sitting in our large living room together, drinking Chateau Montrose and reading the Sunday newspaper quietly in the comfort of the summer sun.

Of course, it was only during the daytime that our day was relaxed and calm. Once the sun began to set and the evening began to replace the light, the quietness of our home had to be put aside for another time, hopefully in the near future, as we began to fill our home with new faces.

Firstly, the Japanese ship girls arrived at 22:00 sharp. As it turned out, Oberstabsfeldwebel Jollenbeck, as precise and punctual as ever, was the one who delivered the Japanese ship girls from the Berlin Tegel Airport to our doorstep, revealing his role when we opened the door for him and the newly arrived ship girls. We thanked him for his volunteer work, as we, not knowing that he had been contacted by Seal Team Six to lend a hand in this minor segment of our collaborative effort, could not have known to reimburse him for his time, but we did convince him to accept a tart that I baked with a chocolate-filled crust topped with juicy strawberries while Retia was napping in the afternoon, and he said it would be perfect to share it with his children at home as an apology to them for returning home so late.

After we saw the sergeant off, we turned our attention to our newly received ship girls from Japan. Two of them approached me and Gernot and saluted us and introduced themselves very courteously and politely to us in perfect English. As we had been notified by Seal Team Six prior to their arrival, my husband and I recognized these two girls as the ship girls who hold rank and uniform: the girl with the long blue hair named Samidare, and the girl with the black hair and strange "hair flaps" named Shigure. Both of them now possess the rank of _Oberleutnant_ , or Second Lieutenant in English, and we, despite not being part of the military or having any prior military experience, return their salutes with respectful ones of our own. We thanked them for sacrificing their time and feelings to provide their effort, energy, and expertise to our undertrained and perhaps underpowered fleets and military forces, despite the fact that they could have easily chosen to return home instead. I could tell these young ladies did not seem too happy when I brought this up, so I quickly moved off the topic. I do not wish to press any sore points if we wish to have them be an integral part of our defense against future Abyssal attacks.

Retia was awake at the time Jollenbeck delivered the ship girls, so naturally, she received the new ship girls as well. Retia immediately became fascinated beyond comprehension with them, and we quickly discovered through Retia's apparent obsession with the girls' hairs that our baby was captivated by the bright colors of their hair. To be fair, we too were very surprised to have the pleasure of seeing such girls with such vibrant hair colors for ourselves. It was surprising enough to see them through photos on their profiles, but seeing them in person was almost a life-changing experience. I even dared to ask them the rude question of whether or not their hair was a natural color or simply dyed, and the girls replied that this was the way in which they had all been constructed. The girl named Suzukaze grumbled about how civilians everywhere they went, in the airport security lines and terminals and shops, all stared at them for their looks. Gernot rather bluntly stated that truth be told, these young women could be considered perhaps among the top 0.5% in terms of pure beauty, were they normal human beings, so of course people would stare, especially considering several of them possessed hair colors that simply are not natural, yet look too real to be dyed. This solicited a few awkward chuckles from our guests, so I hissed at my husband to drop the subject before we could successfully alienate them on their very first night in Germany.

Gernot and I, having spent a few hours prior to their arrival arranging our unused guest room for their residence, showed them their room, and they expressed pleasant surprise and happiness at being given such a large room, which took us by surprise. Because we had been told initially to only expect three ship girls from America, we believed that having them use our guest room together would be perfect, because our guest room is meant for that number of occupants, and because all of the other rooms in our home are rooms reserved for our German girls when they arrived. But when we were told that the number would increase to five, Gernot and I became worried that they may voice complaints about the small size of the room in regards to how many of them would need to share it. But it ended up being an unfounded issue of concern, for the girls seemed very content, more than content, even, with this room we had reserved for them. When I questioned them whether or not this really would be enough for all five of them, Shigure replied that they were very used to much more confined living spaces in their dormitories back in their home base in Japan, so having a room this large for all five of them to share together was almost like a daydream come true. Though, because there are only two beds, Shigure asked for our permission to put the two beds together so that all five of them could fit across the two beds at once, and we gave them full permission to rearrange and furnish this guest room however they liked during the duration of their stay here in Germany.

Thankfully, our guests did not come burdened with luggage as most young women traveling or vacationing across the continent would be, instead staying true to their militaristic backgrounds, with the exception of their ordinary civilian clothes, justified due to the fact that Seal Team Six intended for their presence to remain a secret for our convenience and thus ordered them to disguise themselves as civilians. Therefore, after settling into their new room quite comfortably, I asked them if they wanted to partake in a quick repast, for I know from firsthand experience that flights are very exhaustive and draining, and for me personally, I tend to feel very hungry after flights, if, of course, there are no in-flight meals. The ship girl with the very bright red hair and hair flaps that look suspiciously similar to those of Shigure, whose name is Kawakaze, blurted out that she in fact would love to eat, and then stopped herself, feeling that she had said something very rude. Gernot started to laugh as I invited them all down to the dining room so that my husband and I could prepare a meal for them, and altogether, we descended the stairs to fill the dining room, and I suggested to my husband in German that because we had some frozen spaghetti in our refrigerator that would be too much for the two of us and our daughter to eat alone and was taking up a little too much space in our fridge, this would be a perfect time to cook it, and he agreed. Because our dining room is special in that we have a large dining counter directly across from our spacious kitchen where the ship girls could watch the two of us cook, we could hear our newly arrived guests converse quietly in Japanese as they watched us cook. Of course, we could not understand what they were talking about, nor did we dare to ask, but I liked to think that they were discussing our cooking and how good it would be. Sometimes, I can be just a little bit egotistical.

My ego boost was somewhat justified, at least, when we presented our finished products before our guests, all five of whom gasped loudly at the food brought before them. As it is most militarily and politically important to gain great favors with these five girls, Gernot and I did our very best, perhaps our 120% effort, into making the best spaghetti we'd ever made in our lives. Perhaps in the context of politics, this action could be considered bribing, but I am willing to be guilty of bribing these ship girls with good food so long as it will keep the Abyssal threat in this continent at bay. Fusilli spaghetti with parmesan garlic sauce, stuffed with fried bacon slices and sliced bratwurst. For their beverage, I brought out a tall, unopened bottle of the ever-prominent American brand of sparkling apple cider, Martinelli's, from our wine cellar (which I admit whose contents are half-filled with nothing but apple cider of this brand, as it is both my and Gernot's guilty pleasure as far as beverages are concerned). Samidare, Shigure, and their pink-haired sister named Harusame were all very stunned by our culinary skills and timidly asked us if it was really alright for them to partake in what they clearly believed to be a luxurious meal, while Suzukaze and Kawakaze simply began to dig into their food immediately without restraint. My husband and I urged them to eat, for no one could work on empty stomachs. Or, rather, it would be very difficult to do so. All three of them graciously bowed their heads at us, as I suspect they were at a loss for words for what they thought to be a lavishly generous reception and could only express their gratitude with bows - all the while, we kept telling them to eat first and thank us later.

They certainly did not hold back. They ravished their meals, and they cleared their plates within minutes - or, at least, the more aggressive eaters in Suzukaze and Kawakaze did. The rest of the girls ate their food in more controlled, civil manners, very fulfilling of the stereotypical Japanese image. It was a rather amusing sight to see the girls struggle with forks, because we do not have chopsticks in the house, but they became used to them quickly. They set their sights upon the pot of spaghetti from which we had served our guests and consumed the rest of its contents as well, and we even had to bring out another tall bottle of Martinelli's to quench their thirst. Towards the end of our late repast, Samidare was amusingly very frightened at her fellow sisters' enormous appetites because of just how much food and drink they were consuming collectively, but Gernot and I laughed her concerns aside and told them not to worry; we were financially secure enough to be able to provide for our guests with as much good food and drink as they wanted during their stay here. Samidare explained that their meals in Japan were very frugal and perhaps even meager compared to this, so being treated to such a luxurious dinner took all of them by surprise. She thanked us again deeply for our hospitality before she and her sisters retired to their room for the night to recuperate from their long flights.

I am just personally thankful that these guests of ours are such kind and courteous young women. I can only assume that ship girls in general, no matter what their nationality, have been built to be the as perfect of human beings as can be. Perhaps the idea of sentient humanoid fighting machines dwelling among us is not such a bad idea after all, if they will come in the form of these ship girls.

Oh, the doorbell is ringing. That must be our German ship girls, we had gotten a call saying that their flight from England was delayed and that they would be arriving rather late at night. I will answer the door...


	26. 23-6-2014

**23.6.2014**

Today was the emergency congregation of the representatives of the European Union. As mentioned before, we met today to discuss the topics of the recent terrorist attacks in the forms of the Abyssals and the Hanover Massacre, and most importantly, the topic of fleet personnel.

After cooking breakfast for our Japanese guests and leaving Retia with them in their care (which is some great timing, might I add, for I did not wish to bring our daughter with us to work on this crucial day and our friend Khal unfortunately had prior appointments today and thus could not offer his time to look after her), my husband and I drove straight for the Reichstag nice and early in preparation for the congregation, as the heads of government of all the representative countries of Europe would be in attendance. Thankfully the meeting began flawlessly and on time - both Gernot and I were half-expecting something else to go wrong or another catastrophe to happen, as the times nowadays may threaten. It is as though it is the season for catastrophes...what is this world coming to.

I had the pleasure of being greeted by Sir Sinclair, who surprised me with his sudden arrival at my office, brought to me by the resident Reichstag security who helped him find me. I asked what I owed to him for this surprise visit, and he simply said that Mr. Holmwood, the British Prime Minister and representative of England in this meeting, had requested his company to this meeting.

We did sit down and talk for a little while before it was time to convene. Sir Sinclair brooded that very likely, our respective countries would stand out as the ugly ducklings, so to speak, in the congregation. Germany and England, the only two European countries with known fleet personnel, would be gazed upon with wolfing eyes, and if Marco, whom we expected to be here as well, continues to try to play the long con of keeping his own small fleet of ship girls secret, we are more or less forced to be mutual allies in this situation. I informed Sir Sinclair that I was preparing to give the committee a short presentation on our fleet personnel: their capabilities, their intended design, and the like. We needed to face the likely truth that this congregation would not be a true meeting in terms of planning for the safety of the continent as a whole, but instead a meeting that the other countries would use to force us to cough up information on the fleet personnel we possess so that they may attempt to manufacture their own. As much as Sir Sinclair did not wish this to be true, he also unwillingly agreed that this was perhaps the correct course of action for us to take. Because we both knew that the other countries want to produce their own ship girls, or at the very least, if they could not acquire some for themselves, they would know as much as they could about them as classified military intelligence. But at the same time, we feared that the risk we would be running by doing this is the potential leak of this same sensitive military information into the public, or even worse, to the wrong hands - at worst, the Abyssals themselves. I arranged for security to be bolstered and make _very_ thorough sweeps of the congregation room, but of course there can be only so much security can do; there may always be ways that information can be leaked without us ever knowing how.

The one saving grace that we had is the fact that we do not have rightful ownership of our respective fleets, for the ship girls are patented products and intellectual property of the American Seal Team Six. We in fact did have the option to refuse to disclose any sort of information to our fellow European peers, but that would amount to political suicide for both of our countries because then, we would be suspected of colluding to share an imbalanced portion of continental power through our fleet personnel forces, and the last thing we need is for the unity of the European Union to fragment over a silly issue like this, an issue of fleet personnel ownership. But this still did mean that we could simply feed the rest of the committee information they wanted to hear, and nothing else. If they did not ask for it, we would not be inclined to give it. The real question was, would Seal Team Six allow us to mention them directly in this kind of a situation? Would they not mind? Would they mind? They being a covert American operations team, I imagined they wouldn't want us to mention their name directly. Plus, it would have made our own countries look bad, too - receiving help from an _American_ special operations branch? Especially without notifying any of the other countries? (This cannot be blamed on us, however, Seal Team Six specifically asked us to keep the fleet personnel we built a secret.) In light of American-European relations souring steadily over the past few years, both England and Germany can expect to receive quite a backlash if this was revealed. Then our fellow European countries would begin to wonder what else we were hiding in terms of collaborative efforts with the United States, and even if the American president were to deny such allegations himself, all of Europe would remain suspicious anyway.

The meeting went just as we had discussed, unfortunately. Immediately after precedings were finished, Sir Sinclair and I were bombarded with questions regarding the fleet personnel. In fact, for the duration of the meeting, not one question was asked about the Abyssals. No one talked about what we needed to do against the Abyssals, no one pushed any military or even political strategies against the Abyssals or suggested any countermeasures to strengthen our defenses in the continent as a whole against the Abyssals - no one even so much as brought the topic of the Abyssals up. Instead, it was only about the fleet personnel we possessed. For nearly an hour, Sir Sinclair, Gernot, and I had to sit through twenty-six other individuals demanding explanations for and information about these rumored "ship girls" (although they are hardly a rumor by now, given how much physical evidence there is of our ship girls circulating throughout continental media). Surprisingly, Marco came very well prepared - and by that I mean he perhaps gave one of the most scathing denunciations of our ownership of ship girls among the committee. He even went so far as to gain some of the other countries' support in rallying the committee against England and Germany with the convincing display of spokesmanship, but Gernot and I, knowing Marco, knew that this was merely a front that he was deliberately building in order to keep his secret of his own Italian fleet of ship girls a secret, of course. We spent more time during his short speech wondering how he would ever get himself out of that huge hole he was digging himself, once the other countries found that Italy, in fact, also has a fleet.

To our great surprise, however, the committee was abruptly interrupted by a movie-esque timing, committed by none other than several members of Seal Team Six themselves. It was just like a James Bond movie: Herr Sanford, Herr Deimos, Herr Big, Frau Losira, and Frau Lauren all entered the committee room without warning, and to our amazement, security even let them in. Well, perhaps it was not _exactly_ like a James Bond movie, but the same sentiment was there. The American operatives simply strolled right into the middle of the floor and quite literally hijacked it for themselves. Just how did they even get into contact with Reichstag security without either Gernot or I knowing? How did they even know we were conducting an EU meeting here and now to begin with? They are fearsome operatives indeed.

Seal Team Six simply did my planned presentation for me. By seizing the floor all to themselves, the Americans had full rein to present the information they wished to share regarding their ship girls, and once I realized what they were trying to do, I sighed a breath of relief, since that meant I could simply sit back and let them do my talking for me. They shared much more than even I had intended to reveal to my European colleagues, so much so that at several intervals, I was afraid they might have been telling _too_ much, but because they are the developers, they can choose to reveal however much they want. Most importantly, Seal Team Six claimed ownership of all the fleet personnel constructed in the world, excluding those under Abyssal control, and that their intention for them had been strictly to help different regions around the world combat the creeping influence of the terrorist organization that they were targeting, the A.A.H.W.

When his team was asked why only England and Germany were the only countries to own ship girls so far, Herr Deimos immediately blew Marco's cover by including Italy among the list of nations in known possession of ship girls. So much for his firebranding speech earlier in the meeting. In addition, because the theme of the fleet personnel was clearly inspired by the navies of the old World War II days, Herr Deimos revealed that their plan was initially to have all the major countries of that era with large navies to eventually have all their own fleets of fleet personnel, but due to the unforeseen contingency in the form of the recent remilitarization of the Japanese sovereignty, these plans unfortunately had to be cut short. This explained why the three European countries with fleets like this only had a smattering of ship girls, all things considered, compared to the enormous fleet that Japan possessed because they had been the recipients of the initial Moebius Four Armament program. And for the record, Herr Big added, their own country, the United States, did not possess such a fleet themselves, which vastly surprised many of us, myself included. Why would the developers not even develop a fleet of their own, for their own country? Herr Big stated that the cost of replicating a fleet as large as the American World War II navy was too astronomically costly, even for the huge American military budget that their country has become infamous for in the last decade. And if those who chose not to believe them wanted to confirm, they only needed to wait two days to question the American president, Mr. Tawney Blackwood, himself at the emergency congregation of the United Nations in London. How they knew about that, too is a bit of a mystery.

For now, the American operatives stated that they did not intend to construct more fleet personnel on a regular basis; due to their own busy agendas and their recent efforts to track down the activities of the elusive A.A.H.W., their time to work on the extensions of the Moebius Four Armament program for the rest of Europe would be temporarily put on hold. They requested that all countries respect the hegemony of those who happened to possess fleets of naval personnel, for they would be the countries who would be able to stop Abyssal attacks and bail out the countries that did not. As much as the other countries may desire and covet our fleets, they asked that the other countries respect those who do, because it would not be the EU to regulate our activities with our naval personnel fleets, but they themselves who would revoke our ownership of such fleets if they decreed so.

While the American operatives did end up crashing the committee meeting and cutting it short, I do not mind their interruption at all. Not only was I saved the trouble of facing the wrath of the rest of the European Union committee, but also the rest of the representatives have now been checked in their aggressive quest to find out more about our fleet personnel.

There are many other details regarding the events of today regarding the meeting, but this is a basic summary that I feel is most important; should I fill in all the details, I fear this entry will be too long. Not to mention, today has been especially tiring. I do want to say that when Gernot and I returned home late at night tonight, we found, to our great pleasure, that our German fleet girls and our Japanese guests were getting along extremely well. The girl with the blue hair, I believe her name is Samidare, was talking quite animatedly with Bismarck, the girl with the red hair named Kawakaze was rolling around on the floor with our daughter with U, and Graf was enjoying a cup of tea with the girl with the short black hair, Shigure. When we arrived, they warmly welcomed us home saying that they had quite a day getting to know our German girls, and vice versa. Somehow, I feel quite alright with having a family this big.


	27. 24-6-2014

**24.6.2014**

We were given a surprise visit by the members of Seal Team Six this morning - they arrived just in time to join us for breakfast. Normally both Gernot and I are quite the sticklers for enjoying family meals uninterrupted by unexpected guests, but I am willing to overlook this one instance because our American guests had relieved me of my burden yesterday during the meeting. By revealing themselves and claiming responsibility for the genesis of the German, Italian, and British fleet personnel, Seal Team Six effectively shifted all of the pressure from the other nations' representatives off us and onto themselves. And due to their top-secret counter-terrorism background, Seal Team Six can afford to do this because they can simply ignore such pressure. As political entities, Gernot and I needed to carefully balance the amount of pressure we would have received from our fellow European peers with the legitimacy of retaining our respective fleets. However, the Americans have the luxury of simply ignoring everything because they are not political entities; they are not known to the public, and ultimately, as a counter-terrorist group, their actions are justified in the name of international security. I did initially find it strange immediately following the meeting yesterday that Seal Team Six's influence was so readily accepted, so when I spoke to several of my colleagues on the EU committee with whom I was better friends, they told me that Seal Team Six was indeed rumored to be the world's best counter-terrorism unit, bar none. Never mind the fact that they were American and based and operated mainly out of America, their exploits and accomplishments preceded themselves. It would appear that, simply put, their reputation was nothing short of legendary.

A bit expectedly, however, they did not seem to understand the convenience that they have provided for me and my husband when it comes to our political agendas, but I suppose they do not have to know that. So we gladly fed them breakfast this morning, and all was well.

The attendees of yesterday's emergency European Union meeting are preparing to leave for London tomorrow (many have even already left immediately after the meeting yesterday had concluded), but Sir Sinclair and the British Prime Minister, Sir Nelson Porter, stayed in the city to come speak with us - Gernot and me, that is. So when we went to work today (I had to take my daughter with me today since the girls would be training with the Wunderwaffe team all day today), Gernot and I met with the British leaders in Gernot's office this time. Sir Porter wished to speak to us about the American team, Seal Team Six. He expressed his intentions of speaking with us sooner or later about this matter, both about the fleet personnel that our countries possess and about their creators, but to him, the Americans were a more pressing issue. He stated that he was worried about how influential this team was, and he asked us how much we knew about them in regards to their activities throughout the European continent. We confessed that apart from our limited interactions and communications with them, we knew very little, though I did mention that after talking with a few of our EU committee colleagues, they were more than just a force to be reckoned with, as it would seem. Sir Porter said I had yet to know anything about them. He went on to describe to us what were apparently only a few of their feats here in the continent, and they only knew because Seal Team Six deliberately decided to inform Mi-6 about their activities while they were operating in Britain so as to avoid appearing as trespassers on British soil, so Gernot and I now know that our American friends are indeed living up to their name as the world's most potent counter-terrorist organization. I think they can qualify as an organization by this point, if they have enough resources and manpower to build not one, not two, but four separate fleets...even if the latter fleets are much smaller in number than the first.

Sir Porter asked me what the likelihood was to convince us to let go of our control of our fleet personnel and have them deactivated and decommissioned, perhaps even scrapped. His reasoning was such that Seal Team Six, being an American military team with deep affiliations with heavily classified sections of the American federal government, was ultimately using their new technology in the form of these naval personnel fleets as a roundabout way to slowly exert control over the major European militaries. He cited the words of the Americans in yesterday's meeting when they hijacked it, making a hypothesis that these words signified the intent of the American team to slowly infiltrate the deepest echelons of European military command by producing vital combat assets that we European countries would need in this imminent conflict against this new Abyssal threat. By planting these unintentional double-agents within our chains of command and entrenching them so deeply within our governments and militaries to the point where we would no longer be able to remove them due to their combat importance, the Americans could then have a way to simultaneously sabotage every single major European military with perhaps a single push of a button. It would not be tantamount to nuclear warfare, per se, but the possibility of this happening was, to Sir Porter, almost as threatening. Humanoid killing machines being ordered by a foreign authority to rebel against their own countries and begin obeying every single order of their manufacturers? That did not sit well at all with the British Prime Minister.

Therefore, Sir Porter suggested that we rid ourselves of the fleet personnel. Perhaps, if we did this, we would prevent ourselves from turning our fleets of ship girls into military crutches against these new Abyssal enemies, and instead, we should concentrate on preparing our own conventional militaries to combat this new terrorist threat. After all, his own fleet of ship girls had informed their commanders that the Abyssals seemed to show a sharp weakness to modern air superiority, meaning that outside of our fleet personnel, conventional air forces are our greatest asset against them. This way, the benefits of the decommissioning of our fleet personnel would be two-fold: not only would w be able to unshackle ourselves of our inevitable reliance on American technology that we ourselves had no way of knowing whether or not we commanded fully, but we would also clear our countries' names of our possible secret affiliations with the American team. Despite Herr Deimos and Herr Big making it clear that their initial goals had been to supply every major European navy with their own fleet of ship girls, there were still several representatives at the meeting, namely those of France, Portugal, and Poland, who still had strong opinions about a possible secret quadruple alliance that Germany, Italy, and Britain had with America, or something along those lines, and Sir Porter wished to keep his country's reputation among the EU committee as clean as possible.

I then asked the British Prime Minister if by chance he spoke with any of the British fleet personnel, and he said no. He stated that he would like to at some point, but so far, simply because of their residence at Rosyth Dockyards in Northern Britain, he never had a chance to. When he asked why I asked this, I replied with a simple "nothing in particular".

Immediately following this, I rejected his proposition. The greatest piece of evidence that I can see nullifying Sir Porter's argument lies with Japan. We all know that Japan possesses the world's largest fleet of naval personnel; it is no secret now. We also know everything about the Japanese-American relations and their status over the past half a year, with things such as the Moebius Four Armament Pact and the remilitarization of the country. If Seal Team Six truly intended for these fleet personnel to act as pseudo-sleeper agents, to be awakened at a critical moment to take over the militaries of Europe, why did they simply allow the Japanese to seize control of their single biggest fleet? The Japanese are in full control of their own ship girls, and we had ownership of our fleets before the Japanese seized full control of their own fleet away from the American team. In addition, we always had eyes over our own ship girls as well. So even though we may not know for sure that our ship girls may truly rise up against us, I questioned the legitimacy of such an outcome. This would have to be a most elaborate scheme that Seal Team Six would have to pull off - and even if their goal was to sabotage the militaries of Europe, how would that make any sense? What would a counter-terrorist organization gain from doing the exact opposite of the nature of their organization? To aid a possible vigilante group, or, dare we say, terrorist group? Then what would be the point of them going so far out of their way to manufacture entire _fleets_ of naval personnel? This just does not add up, because surely there are simpler and more direct ways to go about committing sabotage of this degree.

Besides, while I did not state this next reason to our British colleagues, after having spent months with our ship girls and having them live with us in our home, they have almost become extended family to us, both my husband and I. In a sense, they have become our surrogate daughters, every single of them, as we have become their surrogate guardians and parents. So being asked to decommission them, even scrap them, carries a huge negative connotation that I hugely dislike. Of course, there is no way for Sir Porter to know what kind of relationship we have with our own fleet. But the fact of the matter is that these ship girls, as odd as their existences are, as out-of-place they may be in the eye of the public, they have become part of our lives. By this point, they have become a little too important to us personally for my husband or I to place political agenda above their safety and happiness. This is why I have been getting so agitated by the pressure being put on us by our colleagues in the European Union: I want to protect my daughters from the hawking eyes and groping hands of strange men and women who wish to steal them away from us - at least, this is how I view their opinions. I cannot and will not stand for it, and keeping our ship girls protected from political repercussions that have spawned because of them, that they themselves have no way to address due to their natures and their circumstances is becoming more and more so my goals.

Our meeting lasted a fair amount of time, and by the end of it, Sir Porter still asked me to consider his suggestion. Despite it, he declared that so long as Germany and Italy kept their fleets, so too would Britain, and that was just fine, for neither Gernot nor I wish any of us three countries to get rid of our own fleets. We arrived home early because we would need to take a flight very early in the morning tomorrow to London, and we needed to take care of our guests and daughters in the meantime. We had dinner all ready for them by the time they returned from training today, though my husband and I needed to go to sleep immediately after we had eaten. Gernot complained that he would perhaps gain some weight overnight from sleeping right after a meal, but luckily for me, I am staying up just a little bit longer typing this entry. Oh, the benefits of keeping a journal - who ever thought they would also be dietary?


	28. 25-6-2014

**25.6.2014**

The General Assembly meeting of the United Nations today in London had unexpectedly dragged on for so long that we need to have another day to reconvene tomorrow. While we initially plan for meetings with the United Nations to go on longer than expected, considering the urgent nature of the situation in Europe and the global implications of the attacks on European soil, I expected that the congregation get down to business quickly and efficiently. I was wrong - I was still having my hopes up since two days ago when the Americans crashed our EU meeting and hijacked it for themselves. This meeting had no such hijacking by any team of special operatives, so you can perhaps imagine what the meeting was like.

To be brief, the UN meeting was more or less an amplified version of our EU meeting two days prior. Now, instead of only having European representatives voice their complaints and concerns over the fact that only a few select countries possess fleet personnel, it truly did feel like the world whole was complaining to us, letting us know that it was not fair that only Germany, Japan, Britain, and Italy were the four countries in the world that possessed fleet personnel. In addition, the European representatives who were also present at our EU meeting revealed to the UN that a secret group of counter-terrorism operatives known collectively as Seal Team Six, an American organization, was responsible for the construction and distribution of such fleet personnel, so these opening remarks paved the way for the rest of the meeting to unfold.

What surprised me was that the meeting first shifted the attention onto the topic of the United States not possessing their own fleet of such naval personnel - or, at the very least, not a _known_ one. When confronted with this inquiry, the American president, who was in attendance at the meeting instead of the usual American representative, Herr Tawney Blackwood, denied all allegations. He did confirm that Seal Team Six was indeed an American special forces group, but their agenda was not involved with the agenda of American foreign policy. In fact, Herr Blackwood being the shrewd politician that he is infamous for, turned the argument back against the rest of the council by pointing out that Seal Team Six has operated in and assisted many of the countries represented in the UN council in operations of counter-terrorism large and small; by this point, the services of Seal Team Six were so well known they could be classified as a government mercenary group that America chose to lend out to all the other countries in the world; therefore, it was as though most other countries in the council had some degree of debt to pay back to him. Had Herr Blackwood made this statement six years ago before he assumed his first term as the American president, there would have been many a joke made about the American national debt situation - now, no such jokes can be made, and the American dominance in the United Nations council was felt more so than ever. Thus, no one could further challenge Herr Blackwood on the matter of a possible American naval personnel fleet. Besides, there was virtually no evidence to suggest that America had such a fleet, though the future may prove this otherwise, but we will have to see. The American president added that he himself did not directly influence or control the operations of Seal Team Six, and that a highly classified branch of the United States military command instead was in charge, but saying any further would compromise American national security.

Sir Sinclair, the British representative present at the UN council, asked Herr Blackwood why the United States seemed uninterested in acquiring such a fleet for themselves. He said that he found it quite strange to see that the country of the development team responsible for the manufacture of these "ship girls" would not have their own fleet. While understandable that Japan possesses the world's largest fleet of naval personnel by far, Sir Sinclair still expressed doubt that America truly did not have some semblance of this kind of fleet. Considering America's military might and capabilities and tendencies, many of the other representatives agreed; even if the American president himself denied the allegation, it just did not seem very likely. Why _wouldn't_ the strongest country in the world as far as pure military capability is concerned have their own massive fleet of ship girls? Plus, not to mention the fact that the American hemisphere has been unmolested by Abyssal attacks. There have been Abyssal threats in Japan (Asia) and here in Europe, but suspiciously none in the American theatre. Why was this? Was there something the United States was doing to protect its hemisphere ala Monroe Doctrine? And if so, with what? A fleet of naval personnel makes the most sense by far, and for America to deny possessing such a fleet is at least a little bit bogus to many of us present in the meeting. But because no one had any evidence to support this theory, the argument died out and gave way to the next issue of contention.

The focus shifted to Japan next, and this was by far the biggest topic of the day for today's meeting. With the news of Japan's recent aggressive remilitarization, combined with the confident right-wing political atmosphere of the country, many of the UN representatives were eager to ask the Japanese representatives many pressing questions about their resurging military and their political agenda. Because Japan was also noted to be somewhat restricting foreign travel into the country, one of the representatives even likened the development of Japan's recent events to the historic closing of the country by the Tokugawa regime. A bit of an extreme comparison, if you ask me, the reports of Japan "closing their borders" are wildly exaggerated at this point. But no doubt the main focus of the questions regarding the rise in Japanese military hegemony in the Eastern Hemisphere rests on the question of what exactly the Japanese were planning to do with it. Bolstering national defense against the Abyssal threat is fine and all, and the Japanese are, to a certain extent, justified in doing so because they by themselves have suffered half of the known Abyssal attacks in the world, but it seemed just a little bit imbalanced to have a single country own over half of the world's entire known number of fleet personnel, and the Japanese representatives, the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Sakura Ugaki and the Japanese Chief of Maritime Staff Yuuma Akiyama were asked about this.

Herr Ugaki replied that while it was certainly lamentable that the distribution of fleet personnel was not more properly allotted to the rest of the countries of the world, neither he nor his country could be held responsible. Such questions must be asked of the American team that was responsible for the creation of the ship girls, Seal Team Six, not the Japanese government; the mere ownership of a large fleet of naval personnel did not automatically assign them to be a sort of "fleet sage" with all the knowledge in the world to answer everything about their fleet personnel. In addition, he added that as much as they were empathetic towards the Netherlands for their terrible catastrophe at the hands of the Abyssals, the Japanese government did not feel that they could afford to send any sort of reinforcements in the form of their own fleet personnel to assist in anti-Abyssal operations. If they did so, they feared that somehow the Abyssals would pick up on it and decide to attack another location in Japan, and the last thing they wanted was an Abyssal attack on a domestic target. They wished to eliminate the Abyssal presence in the Eastern Hemisphere first before branching out their forces and assisting the rest of the world in their own anti-Abyssal operations, and it would require the presence of all of their available fleet personnel to do so, because they would need to put upon themselves the burden of protecting all of the Asian Hemisphere, as no other Asian country possessed ship girls.

Though, these explanations were shallow excuses to keep Japan's own forces consolidated within their own borders, everyone knew that. Several of the representatives near us even suggested among themselves that the Japanese government instructed their representatives to give such vague and conservative reasons simply for the sake of convincing the United Nations council that they needed their own forces there. But we now knew for certain that Japan had no intention or desire to assist Europe with our Abyssal problem, which also means that the presence of the Japanese ship girls in my house may be very contrary to the intention of the Japanese government...

Naturally, South Korea, North Korea, and China all objected heavily to Japan's consolidation of their naval power. To them, I am sure Japan's intention of bearing the responsibility of protecting the Asian hemisphere is a giant insult to their respective hegemonies in the Asian hemisphere, they being Japan's direct competitors. North Korea can be neglected, but South Korea and China being angry with Japan is certainly setting the stage for an Oriental showdown of sorts on the political scene. Plus, my husband pointed this out to me, that the Japanese fleet personnel, as with our own German ship girls, are meant to personify the Imperial Japanese Navy warships used during the second World War, and China and Korea both have some _memories_ with Japan from that time era. Now, suddenly I feel very glad that we did not end up managing to send our ship girls to Japan. Heaven forbid the other countries in this meeting connect our country with Japan and thus drag us into the picture as well. That is the _last_ thing I would want...

The meeting concluded with the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean representatives beginning to bicker among themselves before the rest of the representatives motioned to call this meeting off in favor of reconvening tomorrow.

When we arrived back in our hotel room, Gernot discussed with me the matter of our housing of the Japanese ship girls. The Japanese representatives made it sound as though we were not supposed to be sheltering Japanese ship girls away from their home. Did this mean that Seal Team Six had sent them to Germany against the authority of the Japanese? Granted, if the Americans are to be believed, Japan had seized control of their intellectual property away from them initially, so this could be just a little revenge on their part. But that still makes it no less politically dangerous: if Japan finds out that we are housing five of their destroyer ship girls without their knowledge, what are we to do? Gernot became noticeably more and more distraught the further we discussed this, because we had never heard anything about this particular development from our American friends or at least to be aware of it before we received our guests; now, it feels as though we are offering asylum to escaped ship girls from a nation halfway around the world. We needed to get into contact with Seal Team Six immediately once we flew home to clarify these things.

Then if that is the case, why are the Japanese ship girls really here? What are the American operatives' plans for them here in Germany, or in Europe in general? And why are their presences intended to be top secret? This is all making me very uneasy, but for now I can do nothing but to try to keep it off my mind until we return and focus on the meeting for tomorrow. I hope our ship girls are doing fine back home...being unable to make them dinner is quite troublesome and discomforting all of a sudden.


	29. 26-6-2014

**26.6.2014**

Oh how shocking the events of today's meeting have been.

It began quite ordinarily, all things considered. In order to handle the simpler matters, the United Nations council voted to fully support the relief effort occurring in the Netherlands. Prior to today, several branches of the United Nations Development Group and other well-known third-party international relief organizations have been carrying out the relief effort for the displaced Dutch civilians and helping reconstruct the dikes that the Abyssals had destroyed on the day of their attack, but with official UN support to back them, the relief effort should be well under way shortly. In addition, all European powers - including Russia, somewhat surprisingly due to how decisively the Russian representative cast his vote - motioned to mobilize their naval fleets and supplementary military branches wherever related to prepare for future attacks made by the Abyssal group, and all European representatives agreed to assist one another wherever an Abyssal attack may strike. The representatives of the other hemispheres also made similar agreements, although this was a little bit rougher with the Asian representatives, as both of the Koreas refused to cooperate with the rest, and China only grudgingly agreeing to cooperate.

But once these simpler matters were taken care of, the floodgates were opened...oh, was that "too soon", as the Americans would say?

The first shocking development: Japan almost walked out of the meeting. It began with a discussion on behalf of the South Korean representative who once again brought up the issue of Japan's glaringly large fleet personnel number. He proposed that there were two realistic solutions to resolve that issue, and that one of them must be taken: either the team responsible for the production of these ship girls, Seal Team Six, must produce additional naval personnel for all or at least most of the major powers represented at the UN council, and that the American president, Herr Blackwood, would have to find a way to order the team to carry this order out and distribute them to their respective nations (at the exchange of each of the countries compensating Seal Team Six either monetarily or via other compensation methods), or Japan must distribute its own fleet to the rest of the major powers of the world to station the world's supply of fleet personnel evenly to make sure no major region was at great risk of an Abyssal attack without the opportunity of a focused counterattack (or having the Japanese fleet personnel stationed in specific areas around the world instead of assigning them to different countries was acceptable too). Naturally, the Japanese representative, Herr Ugaki, protested violently at this notion, but he was very clearly alone in his own opinion, as the rest of the council set up a motion to decide on this matter and had everyone discuss. From what I was able to observe, many of my European colleagues, many of whom already know Seal Team Six to varying degrees depending on the countries they represent, did not want to owe the team any more favors. Plus, the notion of having to pay an American military entity (or even perhaps the American federal government directly) did not sit well at _all_ with the European representatives, so the vast majority of them voted for the latter option, including my husband and I, but not because we had anything against the American government in particular, just a political face-saving maneuver. The other regions of the council was a little more divided, but it was still rather clear that the council was favoring having Japan partition its fleet of naval personnel and distribute them around the world.

In response to this, Herr Ugaki condemned the UN council of attempting to sabotage the Japanese military. He accused Herr Blackwood of negotiating a deal with the rest of the council behind his back to have them vote to split up Japan's fleet, possibly in reference to the fact that America had lost its share of military power stationed in Japan because of the Moebius Four Armament Pact - a threat that the American president simply sneered at and said nothing more. Then, the Japanese minister proceeded to walk out of the meeting room, although Herr Akiyama, the Chief of Maritime Staff of the Japanese Navy, was a little more reluctant to take such a drastic action. While Japan's resistance to this motion was expected so that a reasonable compromise acceptable to all parties could be reached, having the Minister of Foreign Affairs simply walk out on the meeting would be terrible, because Japan by itself funded almost ten percent of the United Nations budget, the second-highest amount after the United States. Needless to say, this would be a huge absence of funds for the UN council, so the Secretary General compelled the council to reconsider and rethink the terms of the motion, and only by promising not to compromise Japan's contemporary military hegemony was Herr Ugaki so compelled to return.

But then came a period of general indecision. Everyone (except Japan, obviously) felt that Japan possessing the vast majority of fleet personnel available to the United Nations was imbalanced, to say the least. But what would we do about it? How would we go about balancing it without enraging Japan and making its representative view it as an unjust exertion of international power on Japan's ability to maintain national security? The Mexican representative suggested that Japan operate on a leasing program in which countries who so desired could purchase the services of Japanese naval personnel on contract for a set period of time, perhaps with accumulating amounts of interest as though they were bank loans. For some reason, the Korean representatives were quite enthusiastic about this notion, but I'm not exactly sure why. Conversely, the Japanese representatives looked aghast at such an idea. Selling out their own fleet assets for money? I can see how it would be highly offensive, although such a notion is not all that strange with other nations - I hear that the Royal Navy is thinking about putting up one of their carriers for sale soon. But the Mexican representative's idea was at least the closest to being a discussable compromise.

Until, that is, after some discussion between themselves, the Japanese representatives proposed the most shocking compromise today: Japan would launch a major global offensive with their fleet of naval personnel in a worldwide tour of the seas to hunt down and exterminate whatever Abyssal threats they could find. Because the Japanese fleet was so large, Herr Akiyama proposed additionally that their fleet would be partitioned into three fleets: two major subfleets and a third minor scouting fleet, all three of whom would scour the seas in different directions in order to seek out the Abyssal threat and alert any nearby countries of any detected Abyssal presence for reinforcements.

This was a huge double-edged sword for everyone involved. For one, Japan is clearly willing to extend a military hand to the global stage in the international effort against the Abyssal threat. Not only this, but Japan is willing to take the leadership role in a movement that is still not very well understood, a movement in which everyone else has no real idea on how to lead if they had to lead it. And for free, too - Herr Akiyama clarified that Japan would ask for no compensation for their fleet's efforts, other than being able to resupply wherever they needed to, of course. But this more dramatically rang alarm bells in most other countries' representatives' heads: in light of Japan's recent remilitarization efforts and political right-wingism, this could be interpreted as a method for Japan to practice its newly regained military capabilities on the global stage by using the excuse of the Abyssals to do so, plus all of the other questionable implications that come with a nation making a global tour of part of its military - and a _huge_ navy at that. I daresay some of Japan's neighbors in the Eastern Hemisphere have something to say about that.

But compared to all of the other compromises put forth today, the one made by the Japanese representatives was the most acceptable to the majority of the council. Of course no one liked it entirely, but it was the only such compromise that could accrue a majority of votes from the council members to be worked on as the official compromise. With this being set in place, the council set about working on the details of the compromise.

Japan, as promised, would deploy its fleet of naval personnel on a multi-stage international tour. The Japanese fleet's stated objective is to seek out and destroy all Abyssal assets and forces; if in the event that they could not eliminate them, they were to study and track Abyssal movements and distribute whatever information and intelligence gleaned to the United Nations. Japanese fleet personnel would be given military clearance to dock at designated naval stations around the world, where they would be able to resupply and rest before continuing on their journey. However, Japanese fleet personnel would have to rely solely upon themselves for any combat they would engage in. They would not be able to request support from any military entity; in fact, the compromise specifically outlawed the Japanese fleet personnel from requesting or receiving aid from any military entity - this extended to mercenary and paramilitary groups and private military companies as well. They would also be outlawed from doing the same with civilians, as well. The Japanese fleets would depart in eleven days' time, on July 7th, 2014. One fleet would head southwest from Japan towards the Indian Ocean and make their way west; the second fleet would head east towards the United States, reaching the Aleutian Islands as their first checkpoint, and instead of heading through the Panama Canal, they would sail around Cape Horn and head up to Canada from there. The third fleet would remain in the Eastern Hemisphere and remain vigilant for possible Abyssal attacks on any of the Asian countries. The two other fleets would link up in the United Kingdom and sail to the Mediterranean with the British fleet to meet with the German and Italian fleets.

My personal biggest surprise was the relatively little amount of attention the council paid to the European fleets. Everyone was so focused on resolving "the Japanese question" that the British, Italian, and German fleets were set on the backlogs. But to conclude the meeting, the council did make an agreement to deploy the European fleet personnel to anywhere where they were needed at a moment's notice to defend against future Abyssal attacks in Europe. I suppose the threat of countries like Britain, Germany, and Italy possessing fleets pales in comparison the giant that is Japan...or "the bull in the china shop", if this joke makes any sense.

But this will mean that eventually, given time enough, the Japanese fleets may figure out that we are keeping five of their destroyers. Of course this is not a guarantee, but what are the chances that they will find out? What will happen if they do find out, and how will Japan react? Not positively in the slightest, of course, that's not even a question. I suppose it is more a matter of _how far_ their demands will go. I _really_ need to contact the Americans about this issue...this is my most important task. While I am fine with returning the Japanese girls back to their home country, I would much prefer them to stay at least for a little while longer, instead of a few short weeks.

We will be staying the night here in London and be flying back home early in the morning tomorrow. Never have I wanted to see my daughters so much - I am really beginning to regret pursuing a life of politics, but then again, I suppose without my position, I would have never met most of them to begin with.


	30. 27-6-2014

**27.6.2014**

Before our early afternoon flight scheduled right after lunch back to Berlin, Sir Sinclair asked us to visit the Mi-6 headquarters to come speak with him one final time before departing. The simple fact of the matter was that he wished to glean our opinion of the proposal put forth yesterday by the Japanese representatives and eventually compromised by the United Nations council. Although he and Prime Minister Porter had ended up voting in favor of the compromise, now more formally known in-council as the Japanese Globalization Agreement (intentionally given a misleading title so that third party members will not immediately figure out its true intentions in case of an intelligence leak), he asked my husband and I if we _truly_ did support it. To start us off, Sir Sinclair himself proclaimed that he felt very nervous about the JGA, both in regards to the implications of the JGA and the Japanese fleet itself. This was already widely discussed in the meeting, but for the sake of listing them out, Sir Sinclair repeated them anyway.

Through the JGA, Japan could be trying to establish a subtle but global pro-Japanese campaign similar in basic theory to the "soft-power" campaigns that we have seen Japan run to varying degrees of success in the past. These "soft-power" campaigns involved the Japanese federal support and funding of programs that spread Japanese traditional and modern/pop culture across the world, through popular entertainment mediums such as Japanese music and manga/anime and other such assets from the well-known Japanese entertainment industry. However, Japan has also run a few "hard-power" campaigns as well: recently, in the years leading up to their more recent remilitarization, Japan has been sending small groups of JMSDF troops to assist in the conflicts in the Middle East, sprinkled in with relief aid programs (I still find that photograph of a military transport truck with a decal of Astro Boy utterly hilarious for some reason to this day). So many of the nations in the UN council believe that the JGA may either be a huge step towards Japan's ultimate goal of successfully spreading pro-Japanese propaganda around the world or be Japan's next "hard-power" campaign itself.

The main reason why this would have a good chance of working, Sir Sinclair reasoned, was because of a combination of the Abyssal threat and what Sir Sinclair dubbed the "hero potential" of the fleet personnel. Both the Abyssals and the fleet personnel are currently shrouded in mystery, he observed. The general global public has no idea what "ship girls" or "fleet personnel" or "naval personnel" or "the Abyssals" really mean or are; they simply know about the terms and lingo that we politicians are using because that is all that they have to work with, and without factual evidence at the ready, there are bound to be rumors and fabrications flying about until some sort of official statement can be made. But because none of the representatives in the UN council showed any such willingness to make any kind of official statement, either because they themselves knew nothing about either the Abyssals or ship girls or, if they did know, found it in their benefit not to reveal anything, more than likely the public will have to receive their first facts about both the Abyssals and fleet personnel in the next public conflict that arises. And when this happens, if events unfold as Sir Sinclair fears they might, then the Japanese fleet personnel will intervene in an Abyssal attack in progress, defeat the Abyssals, and receive global recognition for their valiant actions. And even though Japanese naval contact with civilians of any other country than their own is specifically outlawed, there is no feasible way for the United Nations to enforce that, because keeping eyes over the fleet would be a huge waste of time, effort, supplies, and money. What we were going to do to watch over them? Use satellites? Preposterous, where on earth would we be getting a handful of satellites to track the progress of three different Japanese fleets sailing around the world at once? So inevitably, the Japanese fleets will protect people all around the world from possible Abyssal attacks and receive praise and recognition for their heroic actions. On top of which, these fleet personnel themselves are in fact quite superhuman. Sir Sinclair stated that he has seen what a ship girl can do for himself: they can be the very definition of a movie-esque "hero" straight out of a comic book: a super-powered young woman fighting a force of evil to protect the citizens of the world, no matter where the enemy may strike. This is a perfect setting for a comic book plot, and the very odd thing to consider is that such a basic premise and faithful execution on the part of the Japanese naval personnel can yield dividends for the public image back home in Japan, thus improving the image of Japan for the rest of the world and thus making it much more difficult for the United Nations to keep Japan's growing military hegemony in check.

Of course, naturally, this would require a perfect unfolding of events in the near future that occur with impeccable timing. Unlikely would Sir Sinclair's predictions come true exactly as stated, if at all. But our British colleague still feared that Japan still stands to gain much from the JGA. Even if the Japanese do not gain as much improvements to their national image as he himself projected, they would still gain a considerable amount, because with the JGA's itinerary, the public would soon realize that there are much more Japanese ship girls than ship girls of any other nationality. Therefore, they would realize that Japan would be the strongest country in terms of anti-Abyssal defense capabilities and turn to the Japanese for protection against the Abyssals: the real question would be how efficiently and effectively the Japanese military command or the Japanese fleets themselves would be in detecting, seeking, and destroying the enemy threat around the world. If they did their job just as planned or better, then the whole world would be for Japan. If not, then the whole world would begin pointing fingers and blame Japan for their inability to protect the world. The more Sir Sinclair discussed this matter with us in depth, the more I realized the JGA truly could be an all-or-nothing political gambit on Japan's part.

Lastly, Sir Sinclair made a few comments about the Japanese naval personnel themselves. Because he has been spending some time with the British fleet, he remarked a little bit moodily that he would have to give the Japanese fleets his consolation. They would have to leave their home country in ten days' time now to sail around the world fighting an enemy that they only knew, and upon their shoulders rested the colossal responsibility of bringing home glory and fame for their people and government, which they themselves may never see until they returned home, _if_ they returned home. Because who would know if the Abyssals would manage to prove dangerous and formidable enemies and whittle down the numbers of the Japanese fleets? Sir Sinclair said that he'd been told by the Seal Team Six operatives that ship girls can be repaired back to life if sunk, but only if their bodies were successfully recovered from the scene of their sinkings. If the Japanese fleets sustain losses during their world tour, how would they be able to replace their losses or repair their casualties? That was never stated in the terms of the JGA. Would Seal Team Six cover that missing element of the agreement, or would they never know, or worse, would they not care to know due to their new hostilities towards the country of Japan for basically seizing control of an entire fleet of their patented products?

Gernot and I told Sir Sinclair that we did not have a solidified, concrete opinion on the whole matter yet; we just wanted to establish our own fleet back home as a well-disciplined and well-trained force of fleet personnel whom we could deploy against the Abyssals in case they were to attack Germany or any other European power, to whom we would gladly lease the services of our ship girls. But if there was one thing we could tell him, it was that we felt strongly about maintaining the condition of our own fleet as well as we could. We asked if Sir Sinclair himself had spent any time at all interacting with the British ship girls outside of their training, and other than a few brief moments, he said no. We both suggested that he spend some time with them. There was much more to the ship girls than their natures as superhuman young women with the power to fight Abyssals effectively.

We left him with this and departed for home. Never have I wished to return home from an overseas business trip than today, to be able to see my daughter and family. As neither my husband nor I have extended family beyond Retia's grandparents (the two of us are both single children), the ship girls really have become our family, and should our Japanese guests end up staying for any extended period of time, they, too, could become part of our family as well.

During our flight back to Berlin, though, I couldn't help but think about how I would react if I ever found out one of our ship girls ever sank or died in combat. Ever since Sir Sinclair mentioned the notion to us, it has been stuck in my mind and I have not been able to get rid of it. As a parent of a one-year-old daughter, I oftentimes have had fears of something terrible happening to my daughter...for example, a car hitting Retia and killing her, perhaps a vaccination gone horribly wrong because Retia's body may have a rare allergy to a certain vaccination and end up crippled or worse, or, because her parents are involved in politics, an political enemy kidnapping her and holding her for ransom, possibly worse as well. Those were the paranoid fears I had but managed to suppress after months of being a mother, and admittedly, following our reception of our German ship girls, those fears are much suppressed since then. But I still know those fears I had, as I can bring them up as freshly as I had felt them the first times. And with them in mind, I compared them to what I might feel if I heard news that one of my German ship girls has died. I don't know how I would feel, in all honesty. No doubt I would feel very sad, but just how sad in comparison to how I would feel if something terrible had happened to Retia? Maybe half as sad, three quarters as sad, or just as sad? It is hard to say for sure, and I do hope I never will have to find such an answer...I hope.

Luckily for us, we arrived home first before the girls could return from their training. Frau Lauren promised us she would babysit our daughter for us in our absence, meaning that we did not have to bother our good friend Khal with more babysitting appointments, although we know he does not mind at all. To surprise them, we cooked them a more traditional German dinner for tonight, hendl and Flädlesuppe, two dishes we have not cooked in quite some time, so it was quite enjoyable for my husband and I to cook old dishes together. Giving my husband and I another reason to cook together, just as we had during our days in university - I really do owe my ship girls much more than I sometimes consider. And to our relief and joy, our Japanese guests thoroughly enjoyed the food we made, and we all spent a happy Friday evening together playing an assortment of card games and board games.

For now, Gernot and I have agreed not to ask the Japanese destroyers about their current situation and the truth regarding their deployment here to Germany - we had meant to call the Americans, but after seeing how happy our whole family, the Japanese girls included, were to see us again, we much preferred to spend time with them all than to let our jobs get in the way of our ability to be a family, just for one cool Friday night.

For tomorrow, though, Prinz Eugen discussed with us the possibility of heading out to downtown Berlin to show our guests around and take them for a shopping trip. We gave them permission to do so and offered to come along, because we also need to buy some more toilet paper, toothpaste, and some more napkins for the kitchen table. The Japanese girls all seemed very excited for this trip tomorrow, for they wanted to see what a downtown city was like.


End file.
